He hates the rain. All his life, it seemed, bad things happened when it rained.
The first thing he can remember happening is at primary school – in the rain in the playground. He slipped on the jungle gym equipment, hand sliding off a rain-slick pole, falling and breaking his arm.
It was raining the day his older brother died. Long awaited rain had caused the road surface to become slick with dried oil becoming liquid again. The school bus began to slide, the driver unable to regain control, and the bus rolling.
He can still feel it. The sensation of tipping, of spinning. Screams, and pain and loss of gravity. And then the sudden stop of movement, but the screams and pain remained. He can remember finding Grant and sitting next to him, begging him to wake up. Wiping away blood, shaking him. Please wake up. Grant – wake up. Help me, Grant. Please. Wake up.
Five students and the driver died that rainy day. His big brother Grant one of them.
It was raining the day he saw a training flight crash. He hadn't had to be on that flight – he and Val Casey had already passed theirs. Of the three planes in the air, one of them had been his other best friend, Lee Taylor.
Three planes totalled. One trainee killed, and Lee had been seriously injured from a clumsy landing after ejecting. Lee had never quite been the same after that. Still brilliant, his mind able to conjure up magnificent gadgets, able to grasp mechanical things so quickly. But there had been something off about him. His happy go lucky air had become devil may care, and his recklessness increased. Usually dragging him and Val after him in a vain attempt to stop things before they got too out of hand.
Was it his imagination or had it been raining those times too?
It was raining when what was to become known as the Global Conflict began. Young men and women drawn into warfare that shouldn't have happened. All though those years, it seemed like it never stopped raining.
It was raining on the worse day of his life. In fact, the rain had been responsible for it. Rain instead of snow. A warm snap, and so the rain weakened piles of winter snow, frozen ground turning to mud, sliding, taking half a mountain with it.
Half a mountain. A mountain ski resort. Human lives. Three that mattered most to him.
His father, killed when the ground opened up beneath him as the mountain gave way.
And his greatest loss. His Lucille. His Lucille and their unborn child. Killed when a mountain fell on top of the resort, and swept it away. In the rain, searching for her, the rescue equipment hampered by the mixture of snow and mud. The resort was geared up to rescue after avalanches, disasters involving snow.
But the mixture of snow and mud defeated them, and by the time they found Lucille, she had died. Not because of her injuries, but because they had taken too long to find her, too long, and the fragile pocket of air had depleted.
It rained the day they buried his father and his Lucille. More mud, sticky on the soles of his shoes, but the rain covered the tears on his face as they lowered the coffins into the graves in the family plot.
He made a vow that he would never let the rain defeat him. No more lives lost because of the rain if he could help it.
It was raining again now as he made his final approach to the airport. It was normally something that he could do with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back. The approach wasn't tricky, the rain was steady, no wind, nothing that said "dangerous". He knew that his jet was perfectly maintained.
There was absolutely nothing to forewarn him of the microburst that hit. Superb pilot though he was, he knew that this was going to be a bad landing. He struggled to keep hold of his bucking jet, the rain lashing the windscreen in front of him. Mocking him.
This small airfield, hundreds of miles from where he should be, but exactly where he needed to be. To face and defeat the man who mocked him. As the rain mocked him now.
The ground came up fast, and he braced for a heavy crash landing.
He hated the rain.