Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper Read Online Free PDF

postpone his journalism degree. In the spring of 1944, as the Allied troops prepared for the D-Day invasion at Normandy, Kenny enlisted in the Army. For basic training, he was sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Here, he joined the Paratroops. It was a prestigious detail, an elite fraternity of aerial invaders. Training was arduous. By the time he strapped on his harness and gear—rear chute, front (or reserve) chute, crash helmet, canteen, cartridge belt, compass, gloves, flares, message book, hand grenades, machete, M-1 Garand rifle, .45 caliber Colt, radio batteries, wire cutters, rations, shaving kit, instant coffee, bouillon cubes, candy—he could barely walk. The load weighed nearly a hundred pounds. His fellow Paratroops had to push him onboard.
    Kenny was 11th Airborne Division, the Angels. He trained forparachute jumps over jungles and jungle warfare. The Angels were fighting in the Philippines. When he arrived overseas, the war was over. On base, Kenny worked as a mail clerk. For extra money, he volunteered for parachute jumps. He wrote about them in letters he sent home.
I went to church this morning. I went last Sunday also, but I had more reason to go, as after ten months of hibernation I once again donned a chute and reserve and entered a C-46 .
    I looked up C-46. It was a massive military transport plane. Curtiss Calamity, troops called it. Kenny and twenty-nine other Paratroops jumped out the side door.
I cringed a good deal but I managed once again to pitch myself into the blast. That jump was worth $150. The nicest thing about this whole affair was that I never had time to worry about it.… I had only an hour to get into my harness. The first thing I knew I had jumped and was on my way back to the trucks that were to carry us into camp. Don’t get the idea that I didn’t get that certain stomachless feeling, because I did .
    He spent a week on vacation in Numazo, an ancient Japanese city known for its hot springs.
I lived in a hotel, which sat only about fifty yards from the shore. I spent most of my time up on the roof during the day; nights I usually lounged in a beach chair down by the water’s edge. They had a group of Hawaiian guitar players down there. With the music, the breeze off the ocean, and the waves crashing the shore, I felt like a millionaire enjoying his millions .

    Every time I read the letter, I get stuck on that line. Like a millionaire enjoying his millions .
    More coincidences lining up. Not only did Kenny know how to parachute, like Cooper did, Kenny did it for money, like Cooper did. Maybe his request of $200,000 was an echo of the $150 he made from the military during his test jump? I wondered how much $200,000 was worth in the fall of 1971. It didn’t sound like much. I punched the numbers into a historic currency calculator. The return: $1,080,054.
    Like a millionaire enjoying his millions .
    Throughout his life, Kenny was not a heavy earner. He was a gutsy laborer, willing to work dangerous jobs that paid a few dollars more an hour. He was also restless, aimless, as if trying to escape. But from what?
    After the war, Kenny went on the road and sold encyclopedias for the Continental Sales Corp. He also worked the ticket booth at Charley Dobson’s circus in Minnesota. In 1949, he was hired by Northwest Orient and sent to work on Shemya.
    Schmoo—that’s what Northwest employees called the island. Living here was like living on the moon. Located on the far tip of the Aleutian Islands, a few hundred miles off the coast of Russia, Schmoo was a pit stop for Allied planes that needed to refuel in the Northern Pacific. The island was small and lonely and flat. The winds were vicious and cold. After the war, Schmoo became a garbage heap for the U.S. military. It was cheaper for Allied forces to dump surplus from the war here than transport it back home. The beach was littered with rusted-out tanks and old bullets.
    On the island, Kenny was a grunt. He cleaned airplanes and dumped