The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper

A fictional account following a man known by the alias D.B. Cooper bailing from a commercial 737 airliner on a scheduled flight from Portland to Seattle on Wednesday, November 24, 1971 with stolen money in the amount of $200,000 is told, with whatever happened to him from that point on in reality never officially known. With the flight rerouted to Reno on his directive with he threatening to detonate a bomb otherwise - it really a fake - he parachutes out the back door somewhere over the Oregon wilderness, he, if he does survive the fall, able to hide among the masses being the first day of deer hunting season. Despite his troubled relationship with supervisors, Bill Gruen, an investigator with General Indemnity Insurance which is liable for the money, is able to convince them to let him lead this case, dangling in front of them that he knows who "D.B. Cooper" is, he not telling them in the probability that once they know, they will take the case away from him. After his initial investigation, Gruen, a former Army Drill Sergeant, suspects Cooper is really Jimmy Meade, one of his former soldiers, one of the few men who could pull off such a stunt. Gruen is correct. As such, Gruen goes to Jackson Hole, Wyoming where Jimmy's wife, Hannah Meade, who operates a river rafting company, and his father, a retired Brigadier General, live. Jimmy, who has been gone for six months with only the occasional postcard to Hannah, has a complex love/hate relationship with both, neither who knows about what he did. However, Jimmy does come back in wanting to run off with Hannah and the money into obscurity. Jimmy does have a plan for them to get out of the country, Hannah who knows she cannot resist him, helping him evade Gruen, especially important as Jimmy had always considered Gruen an SOB. As Jimmy and Hannah go on the run with Gruen hot on their tail, their situation is made more complicated by the addition of Remson, who served in the army with Jimmy, he, a lowlife who was MIA in the war and went on to serve time in Levenworth, believing too that Jimmy is Cooper and that he deserves whatever he can get of that $200,000.