Vasquez smiled for the first time since he had entered the cockpit, a brief, real smile. "That was mostly the checklist, Tom. And the boy who knows it by heart."
Micah felt heat climb into his face, but his eyes stayed where they belonged. Attitude, altitude, heading, airspeed. Back again. The list was longer now, and he was still on it, line by line.
Chapter 18: The Storm Cell
Tom Reyes saw it on his radar before Micah saw it out the window, and that was the only mercy in it.
"Meridian four-one-seven, Memphis. The cell I was steering you around has built faster than forecast. You will cross its southern edge in about three minutes. There is no clean way around it. Expect severe turbulence and heavy rain for four to six minutes."
Vasquez answered before fear could answer for either of them. "Copy, Memphis. We will secure and fly through the edge. Cabin is belted. Advise if it worsens."
"Micah," she said, turning to him, "listen to me carefully. In a moment this will get loud and rough. The airplane will move more than you want it to. Your job does not change. What is the rule?"
He knew it, because Joe Abernathy had made him say it at the start of every simulator session for three years, even on the calm days, especially on the calm days.
"Fly the plane first," Micah said. "Panic later."
"And if there is no time later?"
"Then there was no time for panic at all."
"Good." She braced her left hand near the thrust levers. "Small corrections. Do not chase every bump. Let her ride, then bring her back. Talk to me the whole way through. If you are talking, you are thinking."
The first gust hit like a hand shoving the nose sideways. Alarms did not sound, but everything loose in the cockpit rattled at once, and Micah's stomach dropped as the jet climbed a hundred feet, then sank, then climbed again. Rain hammered the windshield until the world was only noise and blackness.
Lightning cracked so close that for an instant the whole cockpit was lit blue, every switch and dial thrown into sharp relief, Vasquez's face, his own hands, pale and tight on the yoke.
"Airspeed," she said sharply.
He made his eyes move. "Indicating one-eighty, now one-nine-five, now one-seventy-two." The needle swung as the wind changed around them. "It will not hold."
"It will swing. That is the storm, not you. Average it in your head. Do not yank power for every swing. I have the thrust. You have the attitude. Keep the nose there. There."
Another drop. His shoulders hit the seat straps. Somewhere behind them a passenger screamed, quickly stifled, and Grace Kim's voice rose down the cabin, firm and far away, telling everyone to hold on to their armrests and breathe with her.
"Heading," Vasquez said.
"Two-three-five, drifting right, correcting left, small, small." His voice sounded strange to him, too young and too steady at the same time. "Coming back. Two-three-eight. Two-four-zero."
"Beautiful. Altitude."
"One-one thousand two hundred, climbing, now descending through one-one thousand, now nine hundred below." He swallowed hard. "Ma'am, we are losing."
"We are being pushed. There is a difference. Watch the trend, not the fright. I am adding a touch of power. Feel it?"
He felt it, a deepening hum through the floor and through his shoes. The descent of the altimeter slowed, stopped, began to crawl back.
Grandpa Walter's voice came to him then, from a porch in Jackson with a ceiling fan turning overhead: a machine will tell you what is wrong if you listen. Micah listened past the rain and the rattling and the blood in his ears, and underneath it he heard the engines holding their note, steady and honest. The airplane was not failing. It was being beaten by weather and still flying, and his only job was not to get in its way.
"Talk to me," Vasquez said again, though her own voice had gone tight with the effort of flying one-handed.
"Engines sound steady," he said. "Attitude is holding. We are rough but we are not rolling. Wings are coming back to level each time."
"Yes," she said. "Yes. That is flying, Micah. That is exactly flying."
Lightning again, and in its flash he saw the rain running upward over the glass, beautiful and terrifying at once. The green notebook shifted in his pocket as the jet bucked, and he thought of his mother in a hospital bed, trusting a plane and a son she could not see.
The worst minute passed the way Joe said hard minutes always passed: not all at once, but second by second, each one survived separately.
Then, almost without warning, the hammering eased. The swings grew smaller. The needle calmed. Grey replaced black outside the windshield, and then a ragged edge of clearer night.
"Meridian four-one-seven," Tom said, and Micah could hear the relief the man did not try to hide. "You are out of the cell. Radar confirms it behind you. Well done, both of you."