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Captain Robert Russell, the pilot of the four-engined DeHavilland Heron, wore a Hawaiian shirt with pineapples on it. That morning pineapples had seemed like the perfect choice. Tropical and carefree. He was into Hawaiian shirts. Every shirt had its own message, its own vibe. You had to have the right shirt or you wouldn’t be in the zone. And flying planes was all about being in the zone.

Right now was not feeling like a real pineapple moment. He should have worn the shirt with tigers on it.

He’d spent the last forty-five minutes vectoring around this storm, trying to find a way through. Where had the storm come from? It hadn’t been on any of the forecasts! So far, he hadn’t found any breaks in the squall. There’d been sixty, seventy naught headwinds, crazy downdrafts, sudden side winds. Basically the plane was getting beaten to death.

BAM! A huge bolt of lightning shot through the sky, illuminating the massive black thunderheads all around the plane.

He tapped the compass. Something about it didn’t seem right. The plane was forty-six years old—the exact same age as Captain Russell. Gauges were always going out. Situation normal. But not the compass. Nothing ever went wrong with a compass.

A sudden crosswind rolled the plane sideways. Captain Russell jerked the yoke, hit the rudder, wiped sweat off his brow. He was having trouble maintaining his heading in these crosswinds.

He looked over his shoulder. The kids back in the cabin seemed oblivious to the storm. One boy was standing up making a video of himself and another was wandering up and down the aisle harassing the other kids.

Captain Russell hadn’t always been flying rattletrap old planes like this. Twenty years ago he’d been a captain in the air force, flying KC-130 refueling planes—one of the most demanding flying jobs you could have in the military. But he had never fit in with the military way of doing things, though, and so the air force had eventually given him the old heave-ho. (The day he’d shown up for duty wearing a Hawaiian shirt under his flight suit had pretty much sealed the deal.)