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

No word whether she had been able to reach Buck's widowed father or married
brother. Buck wondered if that was on purpose or if she simply had no news yet.
His niece and nephew had to be gone if it was true that no children had survived.
Buck gave up trying to reach the office directly but again successfully connected
with his on-line service. He uploaded his files and a few hastily batted out messages
of his whereabouts. That way, by the time the telephone system once again took on
some semblance of normalcy, Global Weekly would have already gotten a head
start on his stuff.
He hung up and disconnected to the grateful look of the next in line, then went
looking for that doctor. No luck. Marge had referred to the innocents. The doctor
assumed it was the Rapture. Steve had pooh-poohed space aliens. But how could
you rule out anything at this point? His mind was already whirring with ideas on the
story behind the disappearances. Talk about the assignment of a lifetime!
Buck got in line at the service desk, knowing his odds of getting to New York by
conventional means were slim. While he waited he tried to remember what it was
Chaim Rosenzweig, the Newsmaker of the Year, had told him about the young
Nicolae Carpathia of Romania. Buck had told only Steve Plank about it, and Steve
agreed it wasn't worth putting in the already tight story. Rosenzweig had been
impressed with Carpathia, that was true. But why?
Buck sat on the floor in line and moved when he had to. He called up his archived
files on the Rosenzweig interview and did a word search on Carpathia. He recalled
having been embarrassed to admit to Rosenzweig that he had never heard of the
man. As the taped interview transcripts scrolled past, he hit the pause button and
read. When he noticed his low battery light flashing, he fished an extension cord out
of his bag and plugged the computer into a socket along the wall. “Watch the cord,”
he called out occasionally as people passed. One of the women behind the counter
hollered at him that he'd have to unplug.
He smiled at her. “And if I don't, are you going to have me thrown out? Arrested?
Cut me some slack today, of all days!” Hardly anyone took note of the crazy man
on the floor yelling at the counter woman. Such rarely happened in the Pan-Con
Club, but nothing surprised anyone today.


Rayford Steele disembarked on the helipad at Northwest Community Hospital in
Arlington Heights, where the pilots had to get off and make room so a patient could
be flown to Milwaukee. The other pilots hung around the entrance, hoping to share
a cab, but Rayford had a better idea. He began walking.
He was about five miles from home, and he was betting he could hitch a ride easier
than finding a cab. He hoped his captain's uniform and his clean-cut appearance
would set someone's mind at ease about giving him a ride.
As he trudged along, his trench coat over his arm and his bag in his hand, he had an
empty, despairing feeling. By now Hattie would be getting to her condo, checking
her messages, trying to get calls through to her family. If he was right that Irene and
Ray Jr. were gone, where would they have been when it happened? Would he find
evidence that they had disappeared rather than being killed in some related
accident?
Rayford calculated that the disappearances would have taken place late evening,
perhaps around 11 P.M. central time. Would anything have taken them away from