"Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins - Left Behind Series 1 - Left Behind" - читать интересную книгу автора (LaHaye Tim)

“Man, you've got to get back where you came from. We left Paris an hour ago, got
the word what's happening, and were told to go straight to Chicago.”
“What's happening, Concorde?”
“If you don't know, why'd you put out the Mayday?”
“I've got a situation here I don't even want to talk about.”
“Hey, friend, it's all over the world, you know?”
“Negative, I don't know,” Rayford said. “Talk to me.”
“You're missing passengers, right?”
“Roger. More than a hundred.”
“Whoa! We lost—nearly fifty.”
“What do you make of it, Concorde?”
“First thing I thought of was spontaneous combustion, but there would have been
smoke, residue. These people materially disappeared. Only thing I can compare it to
is the old Star Trek shows where people got dematerialized and rematerialized,
beamed all over the place.”
“I sure wish I could tell my people their loved ones were going to reappear just as
quickly and completely as they disappeared,” Rayford said.
“That's not the worst of it, Pan Heavy. People everywhere have disappeared. Orly
lost air-traffic controllers and ground controllers. Some planes have lost flight
crews. Where it's daylight there are car pileups, chaos everywhere. Planes down all
over and at every major airport.”
“So this was a spontaneous thing?”
“Everywhere at once, Just a little under an hour ago.”
“I was almost hoping it was something on this plane. Some gas, some malfunction.”
“That it was selective, you mean, over.”
Rayford caught the sarcasm.
“I see what you mean, Concorde. Gotta admit this is somewhere we've never been
before.”
“And never want to be again. I keep telling myself it's a bad dream.”
“A nightmare, over.”
“Roger, but it's not, is it?”
“What are you going to tell your passengers, Concorde?”
“No clue. You, over?”
“The truth.”
“Can't hurt now. But what's the truth? What do we know?”
“Not a blessed thing.”
“Good choice of words, Pan Heavy. You know what some people are saying, over?”
“Roger,” Rayford said. “Better it's people gone to heaven than some world power
doing this with fancy rays.”
“Word we get is that every country has been affected. See you in Chicago?”
“Roger”
Rayford Steele looked at Christopher, who began changing the settings to turn the
monstrous wide-body around and get it headed back toward the States. “Ladies and
gentlemen,” Rayford said over the intercom, “we're not going to be able to land in
Europe. We're headed back to Chicago. We're almost exactly halfway to our
original destination, so we will not have a fuel problem. I hope this puts your minds
at ease somewhat. I will let you know when we are close enough to begin using the
telephones. Until I do, you will do yourself a favor by not trying.”
When the captain had come back on the intercom with the information about
returning to the United States, Buck Williams was surprised to hear applause