One of my favorite things about this forum is that it makes me look at things from other people's perspectives, which often go against my particular bias. I had always believed strongly that Cooper did not have any accomplices, but seeing a number of posts from people who seem to believe that Cooper had a "ground man," made me decide to ask myself how one might plan the caper if a ground man was involved. It made me think about the TBar find a little differently. I'm wondering what people think about this angle: If we were to try to pull off a skyjacking like this one, with 1971 technology, we'd have to figure out a way for the skyjacker to meet up with the ground man. I feel like a plan that involves a step like "At 8:00, jump out of the plane and try to land on Main Street in Cinebar, where I'll be waiting." would be unrealistic. The way I see it, the team would need to either agree on a primary meeting spot, and then a recurring meeting time, or they would need to agree on a range of meeting places, at a specific time. For example, I feel like the first option would be to say something like: "After the landing, find a place to hide near Merwin Dam. I'll drive on Lewis River Road and pass by Merwin Dam just as the sun is coming up each morning, and just as it is going down each day. Make sure you can see Lewis River Road around sunup, and sunset, each day until we meet to flag me down." The second option would be to say something like: "Make the jump when you can see the lights of Merwin Dam. When you land, get to the I-5 as soon as you can. I will keep driving up and down the stretch of the 1-5 between Rose Valley and Ridgefield. When you see me, shoot off a flair." The first option doesn't really allow much flexibility for jumping early / late. The second option could allow for jumping earlier / later than expected, as long as the landmark is something that runs from North to South, like I-5 or the stretch of the Columbia River that runs north / south between Rainier and Vancouver. If the plan was to do something like have Cooper get to that stretch of river as quickly as possible, while having a ground man travel north and south on it until the two meet up, that would provide a suitable way for the two to meet up.
The reason that I'm posting it here is that I feel like it also provides a possible explanation for why Cooper would be at TBar. I know that still leaves the question of how the money ends up in shards several feet under the stacks. My thought on that (and I would certainly welcome feedback from people who understand the science of this more than I do) is that Cooper may have wanted to stash the money until he could rendezvous with the ground man. Digging a hole seems like a big risk, because of the time commitment. Another option might be to weigh down the money bag, and put it in a somewhat shallow area of the river near some sort of landmark, with the goal of retrieving it later. If that was what Cooper did, it seems like it would be easy to see how the team might have returned and not been able to find the money bag. At some point in the nine years after that, the bag breaks open. Most of the money ends up spilling out at some point. The money that spills out gets broken up into shards by the elements, while the few packets that stay in the bank bag survive submerged in the dirt at the bottom of the river, until it gets scooped up for dredging.
I'm finishing up an absolutely brutal work week. So, it's entirely possible that what I just typed makes no sense, or is full of holes. If so, please let me know.
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