Randy stares out the window of the Manila-bound 747, sipping on a fluorescent green Nipponese soft drink made from bee extracts (at least, it has pictures of bees on it) and munching on something that a flight attendant handed him called Japanese Snack. Sky and ocean are the same color, a shade of blue that makes his teeth freeze. The plane is so high that, whether he looks up or down, he sees foreshortened views of boiling cumulonimbus stacks. The clouds erupt from the hot Pacific as if immense warships were exploding all over the place. The speed and power of their growth is alarming, the forms they adopt as bizarre and varied as those of deep-sea organisms, and all of them, he supposes, are as dangerous to an airplane as punji stakes to a barefoot pedestrian. The red-orange meatball painted on the wingtip startles him when he notices it. He feels like he’s been thrown into an old war film.