The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (17 page)

“Ladies and gentlemen, we, uh, have a party up here in the cockpit who doesn’t wish to go to our intended destination. Now, we’re cooperating with him completely. We’re going to land in Seattle soon to take on some more fuel. I’ll pass along more
details when I have them.”

The passengers had seen enough newscasts to understand precisely what was going on. Some stuffed cash and jewelry into their socks, fearful that the hijacker would try to rob them on the way to Havana; others bowed their heads in prayer or dug through their
pockets for rosary beads. A woman in first class began to hyperventilate and sob uncontrollably, until her husband muffled her cries by sticking her
head inside his blazer; to the stewardesses’ relief, the hysterical woman
quickly passed out.

But Holder thought Juergens’s announcement had not been sufficiently frightening. He wanted the passengers to feel maximum dread, so that no one would be tempted to act rashly. He grabbed the public address system’s microphone from the captain.

“Weathermen, relax—we are encountering absolutely no resistance, they are complying with all our demands,” Holder said to his fictional overseers. He then shifted the focus of his address to the passengers. “There are Weathermen among you. They have a bomb. One of them is on LSD. Remain calm. Don’t try anything. These men will blow us all up if
anyone steps out of line.”

Eyes darted about nervously as passengers tried to spot the covert hijackers in their midst. Save for children and the elderly, everyone was a suspect.

In seat 22D, Cathy Kerkow could barely suppress a smile. Her future husband’s plan was even more clever than she had imagined.

F
LIGHT
701
TOUCHED
down in Seattle at 3:14 p.m. Per Holder’s instructions, the plane immediately taxied to a runway devoid of traffic. As a fuel truck approached the parked plane, a frantic passenger tried to open an emergency exit over the left wing. His seatmate locked him in a bear hug and reminded him of the hijacker’s threat: “Weren’t you listening?
Don’t do anything funny.”

Holder, meanwhile, became more and more antsy with each passing minute they were on the ground. His research had taught him that a hijacking’s odds of success plummeted in direct proportion to its length of time. He was nearly seven hundred miles north of San Francisco, and thanks to the bounced check snafu that morning, the hour was getting late. The moment the fuel truck moved clear of the jet, Holder uttered a command in Juergens’s ear: “Okay, white man, get this thing moving.”

“Okay, just let me …”

“Now.
Get it moving now.”

Juergens hit the throttle and zoomed the jet down runway 34L. Passengers who had stood to stretch their legs were tossed about
like rag dolls.

Once the plane was airborne and headed south, the gregarious Crawford tried to ply Holder for information. “So, the ones in back—these Weathermen. Their bomb the same as yours, with the grenade and the C-4?”

Holder shook his head. “That one has a timing device. They’ll reset it every two hours, long as they keep
getting what they want.”

Minutes later Donna Jones rang the cockpit bell. A passenger had told her that his wife was dying at a Seattle hospital. He had flown up from Los Angeles because she was undergoing emergency surgery. He was desperate to know if she had survived the ordeal. Was there any way the airline could
check on her condition?

Crawford asked Holder for permission to transmit the message. This small act of deference pleased Holder, who gave his approval.
This guy’s negotiable
, thought Crawford.
We’ve got a rapport going. I can work with him
.

After receiving word that the distraught passenger’s wife was in recovery, Crawford probed Holder even more: “So, after San Francisco, where is it you want us to take you all?”

Holder was caught off guard by the question. He hadn’t planned on revealing his destination until after Angela Davis was safely on board. He fumbled with his reply: “Maybe I want to go to … errrrmmmm, North Vietnam?”

Dead silence in the cockpit. This was going to be a problem.

Crawford pointed to the silver wings affixed to Holder’s uniform. “You flew Cobras, yeah?”

When Holder nodded, Crawford tapped a row of three meters on his instrument panel. “Okay, then you’ll understand this. See, here’s the fuel flow on all three engines. Each one’s putting out three
thousand pounds per hour, yeah? You take nine thousand pounds per hour, we only have five hours of range. Right?”

Holder stared blankly at the fuel gauge. Crawford figured he should clarify his point. “That means you can’t get there. To North Vietnam? Can’t do it. Not on a 727.
Can’t possibly do it.”

It took a moment for Holder to comprehend the enormity of his mistake. In his haste to find another flight to hijack after losing the United tickets to Hawaii, he had completely forgotten about the issue of range. Now he had accidentally commandeered an aircraft incapable of making it to Honolulu, to say nothing of Hanoi.

But it was far too late to abort Operation Sisyphus. Angela Davis was in her most desperate hour. Holder would have to improvise.

“Get me an airplane that can, then. You know, that can go over water.”

Crawford pleaded with Holder to change his mind, to settle for a destination that the Boeing 727 could reach. He explained that Flight 701’s crew wasn’t qualified to fly long-range jets, so new pilots would have to be located, too. He proposed zipping down to Havana instead, or alighting in some Central American country. But Holder stood firm in his desire for a plane capable of crossing an ocean.

“How about King Salmon, Alaska?” suggested Crawford, recalling an isolated town from his Air Force days. “I know a little strip up there where we can take you. We’ll fly away and leave you alone.”

“No.
I want another airplane.”

Crawford rang Western dispatch with the bad news:

Holder now had to contemplate an entirely unforeseen logistical mess: how would he safely move from one airplane to the other? He thought of the late Richard Obergfell, the hijacker who had been cut down by an FBI sniper mere steps from the Boeing 707 that was supposed to fly him to Milan. Holder worried that he could easily suffer the same fate.

A
NGELA
D
AVIS WAS
sitting alone in a San Jose café at 3:45 p.m., trying to enjoy a late vegetarian lunch and a rare moment of peace. The previous twenty-four hours had been a nerve-wracking whirlwind, starting with the trial’s emotional closing arguments on June 1: her attorney had blasted the case as “a gigantic hoax not only on the defendant, but also against the
name of American justice.” Hours later someone had phoned in a death threat to the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office, vowing that Davis would be assassinated when she showed up for court the next morning. Security had thus been extraordinarily tight for the day’s proceedings, which had consisted of Judge Richard Arnason giving his detailed final instructions to the jury. Deliberations in the thirteen-week trial were
now finally under way.

The café’s manager interrupted Davis’s lunch by telling her that she had a phone call from her lawyer. Davis at first assumed he was calling to inform her that a verdict had been reached. But the jury had only been deliberating since noon—how could they have decided the complex case so quickly?

The attorney had no word yet on a verdict, but he did have an important message to relay from Judge Arnason: a group of militants had hijacked a plane near Seattle, and they were en route to San Francisco in hopes of exchanging their hostages for Davis. Three sheriff’s deputies were on their way to the café to escort Davis back to the courthouse; Judge Arnason wanted to
see her immediately.

Dazed by the news, Davis returned to her table to wait for the cops. This wasn’t the first time some misguided soul had thought
of using violence to secure her freedom: in November 1970 a man named Ronald Reed had been arrested for plotting to kidnap the governor of Minnesota, hijack a United Airlines flight, then arrange a swap for Davis.
^†
But up until now, no one had come close to actually
whisking her away.

The sheriff’s deputies arrived around four p.m. and hurried Davis to Judge Arnason’s chambers. Dozens of reporters were still at the courthouse when she arrived, waiting to file their stories about the first day of deliberations. They were stunned to see Davis return amid a phalanx of police, her brightly colored shawl pulled high around her face to help conceal
her shaken expression.

Judge Arnason could tell that Davis was genuinely shocked by news of the hijacking, and he believed her protestations that she had nothing to do with it. The judge mentioned that the FBI might want Davis to speak with the hijackers, to try and convince them to surrender. But Davis said she wanted nothing to do with such crazies, not
even over the telephone.

As Davis slipped away from the courthouse with her police escort, her closest supporters scrambled to distance themselves from the hijacking. The National United Committee to Free Angela Davis distributed a brief, hastily written statement to reporters covering the trial. “We don’t know anything about this,” the statement read. “We don’t agree with this method of obtaining
Angela Y. Davis’ freedom.”

P
ARANOIA WAS THICK
in the cabin of Flight 701 as it made its way to San Francisco. Everyone wondered who might be in cahoots with the hijacker, holding a bomb while stoned on LSD. Holder gleefully stoked this tension by broadcasting messages to his made-up Weathermen.
“Stan, we are still on page six, paragraph twelve,” he said on one occasion; a short time later he told this mysterious “Stan” to “turn to page sixteen, paragraph two.” Holder was trying to convey the illusion that he was running through a point-by-point plan
for a military operation.

In scanning the cabin for “Stan,” several passengers focused on a man in his late twenties sitting in 17F—the only other black passenger on the plane. It did not matter that the Weathermen were essentially an all-white organization; the prevailing assumption aboard Flight 701 was that a black hijacker like Holder would have an accomplice of the same race.

Suspicions increased after the stewardesses began to pour free champagne for the hostages: the man in 17F was the only adult
to decline a glass. Donna Jones, the lead stewardess, overheard several male passengers discussing what implements they might employ to beat the black man to death.

Jones looked over at 17F and saw the man staring out the window, pretending not to notice that he was being
singled out for murder.

One row back, meanwhile, Holder’s former seatmate noticed that the hijacker had left his small black valise stashed beneath 17D. He unzipped the bag and carefully pawed through its contents. As he did so, a small crowd gathered around row 18, eager to learn more about their skyjacker.

There was plenty of reading material in the bag, including Holder’s copy of
Guide to Selected Viet Cong Equipment and Explosive Devices
, marked up with extensive handwritten notes. This was accompanied by a pair of horoscope booklets; one of them, titled
Aquarius 1972
, ended with a lengthy passage about the nature of death, which Holder had underlined in red pen. There was also a book on dream interpretation and a ratty copy of
Steal This Book
, Abbie Hoffman’s infamous guide to using petty crimes to subvert the “Pig Empire” of America.

The bag also contained a bottle of tranquilizers prescribed to Holder by an Army physician; documents detailing Holder’s undesirable discharge; a map of Southeast Asia clipped from
The San Diego
Union
; a pair of brown bell-bottom trousers; a loose-fitting white shirt; and a packet of
Alka-Seltzer tablets. But the passengers were most intrigued by a collection of handwritten notes—apparently drafts of the notes that Holder had used to hijack the plane. Among them was the letter that Holder had attempted to write on the way to Seattle, then abandoned when his thoughts had become too jumbled:

The passengers gathered around row 18 could only conclude that they were at the mercy of a very bizarre individual.

In keeping with her duty as Holder’s eyes and ears in the main cabin, Kerkow leaned into the aisle to survey the commotion in row 18. She could see the assembled passengers rummaging through her boyfriend’s bag and examining his private things. She had to put a stop to it.

Kerkow found Gina Cutcher roaming the aisle with a bottle of champagne. “Those guys shouldn’t be allowed to do that,” said Kerkow, pointing at the men going through Holder’s valise. “That’s not right.” She was visibly upset, her voice on the verge of cracking into a shriek.

Cutcher couldn’t fathom why anyone would care about the morality of sifting through a hijacker’s possessions. But something about
Kerkow’s demeanor convinced her to intervene. She approached the snoops and warned them that their actions might upset the Weathermen lurking about. She put all of Holder’s items back in the bag, which she then restowed beneath 17D. But she whispered to Holder’s seatmate that he should write down what he had seen—the FBI might
find that information useful.