Airport

over the next two years.
It was highly unlikely that the promise would ever be fulfilled.
No self-respecting finance company or bank would have loaned D. 0.
Guerrero the price of a bus ticket to Peoria, let alone an airline fare
to Rome. They would have investigated his background thoroughly, and dis-
covered that he had a long history of insolvency, a parcel of
long-standing personal debts, and that his homebuilding company, Guerrero
Contracting Inc., had been placed in bankruptcy a year earlier.
An even closer check into Guerrero's tangled finances might have
disclosed that during the past eight months –using his wife's name-be had
attempted to raise capital for a speculative land deal, but failed to do
so. In course of this failure he had incurred even more debts. Now,
because of certain fraudulent statements, as well as being an
undischarged bankrupt, exposure, which seemed imminent, would involve
criminal prosecution and almost certainly a prison term. Slightly less
serious, but just as immediate, was the fact that the rent of this
apartment, wretched as it was, was three weeks overdue, and the landlord
had threatened eviction tomorrow. If evicted, they would have nowhere
else to go.
D. 0. Guerrero was desperate. His financial rating was minus zero.
Airlines, though, were notably easygoing about extending credit; also,
if a debt went sour they were usually less tough in collection procedures
than other agencies. This was calculated policy. It was based on the fact
that fare-paying air travelers, over the years, had proven themselves an
unusually honest cross-section of society, and bad debt losses of most
airlines were remarkably low. Deadbeats like D. 0. Guerrero troubled them
rarely; therefore they were not geared-because it
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was not worth while-to defeat the kind of subterfuge he had used.
He avoided, by two simple means, more than a cursory credit
investigation. First, he produced an "employer's reference" which he had
typed himself on the letterhead of a defunct company he once operated
(not the bankrupt one), the company's address being his own post office
box. Second, in typing the letter he deliberately misspelled his surname,
changing the initial from "G" to "B," so that a routine consumer credit
check of "Buerrero" would produce no information, instead of the harmful
data recorded under his correct name. For further identification he used
his Social Security card and driver's license, on both of which he
carefully changed the same initial beforehand, and had since changed it
back again. Another point he remembered was to make sure that his
signature on the time payment contract was indecipherable, so it was not
clear whether he had signed "G" or "B."
The misspelling was perpetuated by the clerk who yesterday made out his
airline ticket in the name of "D. 0. Buerrero," and D. 0. Guerrero had
weighed this carefully in light of his immediate plans. He decided not
to worry. If any query was raised afterward, the error of a single
letter, both on the "employer's reference" and the ticket, would appear
to be a genuine mistake. There was nothing to prove he had arranged it
deliberately. In any case, when checking in at the airport later tonight,
he intended to have the spelling corrected-on the Trans America flight
manifest as well as on his ticket. It was important, once he was aboard,
to be sure there was no confusion about his correct identity. That was
part of his plan, too.
Another part of D. 0. Guerrero's plan was to destroy Flight Two by
blowing it up. He would destroy himself along with it, a factor which did
not deter him since his life, he reasoned, was no longer of value to
himself or others.
But his death could be of value, and he intended to make sure it was.
Before departure of the Trans America flight, he

would take out flight insurance for seventy-five thousand dollars, naming
his wife and children as beneficiaries. He rationalized that he had done
little for them until now, but his final act would be a single
transcendent gesture on their behalf. He believed that what he was doing
was a deed of love and sacrifice.
In his warped, perverted mind-driven by desperation-he had given no
thought to other passengers who would be aboard Flight Two, nor to the
aircraft's crew, all of whose deaths would accompany his own. With a
psychopath's total lack of conscience he had considered others only to
the extent that they might circumvent his scheme.
He believed he had anticipated all contingencies.
The business, about his ticket would not matter once the aircraft was en
route. No one could prove he had not intended to pay the installments he
contracted for; and even if the fake "employer's reference" was exposed