His voice was remarkably steady, though his small hands were gripped so tightly around the heavy control yoke that his knuckles were white.

“Keep us at three degrees down, Gerald,” Malachi ordered, ignoring the doctor for a second. “Don’t let the nose drop any further.”

Gerald Whitmore was panting, his expensive silk tie askew.

“I’m trying,” Gerald whimpered. “It’s so heavy. Why is it so heavy?”

“The autopilot is off,” Malachi said. “You’re fighting the wind directly now. Help me pull back just a fraction.”

The nose of the Boeing 787 pitched downward into the dark, swirling mass of the Atlantic storm clouds.

The gray soup swallowed us instantly.

The cockpit windows went dark, streaked with sudden, violent sheets of rain that sounded like handfuls of gravel thrown against the glass.

“Pitch minus three,” I read from the yellow paper, my thumb pressing hard against the page. “Thrust levers to fifty-five percent N1.”

“They’re at fifty-five,” Malachi said. “We’re descending at two thousand feet per minute.”

“Is that safe?” Gerald cried. “The whole plane is shaking!”

The aircraft shuddered violently as we hit the upper layers of the weather system.