"Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins - Left Behind Series 3 - Nicolae" - читать интересную книгу автора (LaHaye Tim)

ahead gave him room, he whipped the wheel left and punched the accelerator. Chloe
gasped as the car jumped the curb and went down through a culvert and up the other
side. Buck drove on a parkway and passed long lines of creeping vehicles.
“What are you doing, Buck?” Chloe said, bracing herself on the dashboard.
“I don't know what I'm doing, babe, but I know one thing I'm not doing: I'm not
poking along in a traffic jam while the world goes to hell.”


The guard who had flagged down Rayford from the overpass now lugged his and
Amanda's baggage out of the helicopter. He led the Steeles, ducking under the
whirring blades, across a short tarmac and into a single-story brick building at the
edge of a long airstrip. Weeds grew between the cracks in the runway. A small
Learjet sat at the end of the strip close to the chopper, but Rayford noticed no one in
the cockpit and no exhaust from the engine. “I hope they don't expect me to fly that
thing!” he hollered at Amanda as they hurried inside.
“Don't worry about that,” their escort said. “The guy who flew it here will get you
as far as Dallas and the big plane you'll be flying.”
Rayford and Amanda were ushered to garishly colored plastic chairs in a small,
shabbily appointed military office, decorated in early Air Force. Rayford sat,
gingerly massaging his knees. Amanda paced, stopping only when their escort
motioned that she should sit down. “I am free to stand, am I not?” she said.
“Suit yourself. Please wait here a few moments for the potentate.”


Buck was waved at, pointed at, and hollered at by traffic cops, and he was honked at
and obscenely gestured at by other motorists. He was not deterred. “Where are you
going?” Chloe insisted.
“I need a new car,” he said. “Something tells me it's going to be our only chance to
survive.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don't you see, Chlo'?” he said. “This war has just broken out. It's not going to end
soon. It's going to be impossible to drive a normal vehicle anywhere.”
“So what're you gonna do, buy a tank?”
“If it wasn't so conspicuous, I just might.”
Buck cut across a huge grassy field, through a parking lot, and beside a sprawling
suburban high school. He drove between tennis courts and across soccer and
football fields, throwing mud and sod in the air as the big car fishtailed. Radio
reports continued from around the world with news of casualties and mayhem while
Buck Williams and his bride careened on, speeding through yield signs and sliding
around curves. Buck hoped he was somehow pointed in the right direction. He
wanted to wind up on Northwest Highway, where a series of car dealerships
comprised a ghetto of commercialism.
A last sweeping turn led Buck out of the subdivision, and he saw what his favorite
traffic reporter always said was “heavy, slow, stop-and-go” traffic all along
Northwest Highway. He was in a mood and in a groove, so he just kept going.
Pulling around angry drivers, he rode along a soft shoulder for more than a mile
until he came upon those car dealerships. “Bingo!” he said.


Rayford was stunned, and he could tell Amanda was too, at the demeanor of