I picked up
the citation and slid it back into the side pocket of my bag. The leather was warm from my hand, the way it always got after a few minutes. It smelled of old jet fuel and the faint, metallic trace of sweat. I’d carried that bag through more than just crew lounges. It had been with me in a cockpit at 40,000 feet, upside down, in a storm that had no business being flown through. I zipped it closed and looked at the young man in front of me.
“You want to know what a captain does,” I said. My voice was quiet, but it carried. It always did. “Sit down. I’ll tell you.”
He didn’t sit. But he didn’t move either. That was enough.
Typhoon Helen formed faster than any storm I’d ever seen. In less than twenty hours, she went from a tropical depression to a Category
