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

throughout the cabin. Shocked and terrified as everyone was, most were from the
States and wanted at least to return to familiarity to sort this thing out. Buck nudged
the businessman on his right. “I'm sorry, friend, but you're going to want to be
awake for this.”
The man peered at Buck with a disgusted look and slurred, “If we're not crashing,
don't bother me.”
When the Pan-Continental 747 was finally within satellite communications range of
the United States, Captain Rayford Steele connected with an all-news radio outlet
and learned the far-reaching effects of the disappearance of people from every
continent. Communication lines were jammed. Medical, technical, and service
people were among the missing all over the world. Every civil service agency was
on full emergency status, trying to handle the unending tragedies. Rayford
remembered the El-train disaster in Chicago years before and how the hospitals and
fire and police units brought everyone in to work. He could imagine that now,
multiplied thousands of times.
Even the newscasters' voices were terror filled, as much as they tried to mask it.
Every conceivable explanation was proffered, but overshadowing all such
discussion and even coverage of the carnage were the practical aspects. What
people wanted from the news was simple information on how to get where they
were going and how to contact their loved ones to determine if they were still
around. Rayford was instructed to get in a multistate traffic pattern that would allow
him to land at O'Hare at a precise moment. Only two runways were open, and every
large plane in the country seemed headed that way. Thousands were dead in plane
crashes and car pileups. Emergency crews were trying to clear expressways and
runways, all the while grieving over loved ones and coworkers who had
disappeared. One report said that so many cabbies had disappeared from the cab
corral at O'Hare that volunteers were being brought in to move the cars that had
been left running with the former drivers' clothes still on the seats.
Cars driven by people who spontaneously disappeared had careened out of control,
of course. The toughest chore for emergency personnel was to determine who had
disappeared, who was killed, and who was injured, and then to communicate that to
the survivors.
When Rayford was close enough to communicate to the tower at O'Hare, he asked if
they would try to connect him by phone to his home. He was laughed off. “Sorry,
Captain, but phone lines are so jammed and phone personnel so spotty that the only
hope is to get a dial tone and use a phone with a redial button.”
Rayford filled the passengers in on the extent of the phenomenon and pleaded with
them to remain calm. “There is nothing we can do on this plane that will change the
situation. My plan is to get you on the ground as quickly as possible in Chicago so
you can have access to some answers and, I hope, some help.”


The in-flight phone embedded in the back of the seat in front of Buck Williams was
not assembled with external modular connections the way most phones were. Buck
imagined that Pan-Con Airlines would soon be replacing these relics to avoid
complaints from computer users. But Buck guessed that inside the phone the
connection was standard and that if he could somehow get in there without
damaging the phone, he could connect his computer's modem directly to the line.
His own cellular phone was not cooperating at this altitude.
In front of him, Harold's wife rocked and whimpered, her face buried in her hands.