A long-standing familiarity with the airport is of immense help in the fog, and he has already been up in the tower this morning. There are a handful of people around, despite the sense of desolation, and as they line up between lights that blink faintly in the fog and pause there, a voice comes suddenly through the static.
"That you, Raptor?"
The Shadow answers calmly, making a last check across the gauges of the plane. "Lined up and ready, Roger." It's not 'Black Eagle', but there's very few people who'd connect a man that appears to be around Seventy with the would-be-Ninety-something Kent Allard.
"You're clear, all empty this morning. Full visibility at one-hundred."
Invisible to the man in the tower, The Shadow nonetheless gives a mild nod, and click a few switches. The purr of the engines increases to a roar, and they roll forward with rapidly increasing speed. A small plane, it does not take much runway to get airborne, and then they're climbing at a fairly gentle angle of attack.

Thick white air swirls around the plane, too dense to see anything through, and then in a matter of seconds the world is a brighter place. The tips of trees show as dark spots in a blanket of white below.