The gravid storm clouds, pregnant with rain, gave birth to wind as well (a bawling wind strong enough to tear apart the fragile aluminum skin of an airliner), and were also delivered of hail, which danced across the falling pieces of TransGlobal Flight 27, a brand-new A-340 making its maiden journey, bound from London but now not to New York, the city that never sleeps, where no one yet knew of its plight, but to the storm-tossed depths of the North Atlantic, where cod swam curiously among the shattered remnants thrust there by the angry gale, staring into the eyes of the deceased.
Of course Captain Jack O'Rourke, Senior Captain of TransGlobal Airlines, reaching across the slumbering curves of his wife, National Transportation Safety Board Accident Investigator Kathy O'Rouke, to turn off the alarm clock, and silence its incessant pleas, did not know this would be his fate in less than five hours. Nor did Kathy. Had they known, they might have slept in.