"Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins - Left Behind Series 8 - The Mark" - читать интересную книгу автора (LaHaye Tim)

“Unless you need to go to Medical Services,” he said, punching the number into his
phone, “you're in the wrong cart.”
In Chicago Rayford Steele found the Strong Building's ninth floor enough of a
bonanza that he was able to push from his mind misgivings about Albie. The truth
about his dark, little Middle Eastern friend would be tested soon enough. Albie was
to ferry a fighter jet from Palwaukee to Kankakee, where Rayford would later pick
him up in a Global Community helicopter.
Besides discovering a room full of the latest desktop and minicomputers—still in
their original packaging, Rayford found a small private sleeping room adjacent to a
massive executive office. It was outfitted like a luxurious hotel room, and he rushed
from floor to floor to find the same next to at least four offices on every level.
“We have more amenities than we ever dreamed,” he told the exhausted Tribulation
Force. “Until we can blacken the windows, we'll have to get some of the beds into
the corridors near the elevators where they can't be seen from the outside.”
“I thought no one ever came near here,” Chloe said, Kenny sleeping in her lap and
Buck dozing with his head on her shoulder.
“Never know what satellite imaging shows,” Rayford said. “We could be sleeping
soundly while GC Security and Intelligence forces snap our pictures from the
stratosphere.”
“Let me get these two to bed somewhere,” she said, “before I collapse.”
“I've moved furniture in my day,” Leah said, slowly rising. “Where are these beds
and where do we put them?”
“I wish I could help,” Chaim said through clenched teeth, his jaw still wired shut.
Rayford stopped him with a gesture. “If you're staying with us, sir, you answer to
me. We need you and Buck as healthy as you can be.”
“And I need you alert for study,” Tsion said. “You made me cram for enough
exams. Now you're in for the crash course of your life.”
Rayford, Chloe, Leah, and Tsion spent half an hour moving beds up the elevator to
makeshift quarters in an inner corridor on the twenty-fifth floor. By the time
Rayford gingerly boarded the chopper balanced precariously on what served as the
new roof of the tower, everyone was asleep save Tsion. The rabbi seemed to gain a
second wind, and Rayford wasn't sure why.
Rayford left the instrument panel lights off and, of course, the outside lights. He
fired up the rotors but waited to lift off until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness.
The copter had but ten feet of clearance on each side. Little was trickier—especially
to a fixed-wing expert like Rayford—than the shifting currents inside what
amounted to a cavernous smokestack. Rayford had seen choppers crash in wide-
open spaces after merely hovering too long in one place. Mac McCullum had tried
to explain the physics of it, but Rayford had not listened closely enough to grasp it.
Something about the rotors sucking up air from beneath the craft, leaving it no
buoyancy. By the time the pilot realized he was dropping through dead air of his
own making, he had destroyed the equipment and often killed all on board.
Rayford needed sleep as much as any of his charges, but he had to go get Albie.
There was more to that too, of course. He could have called his friend and told him
to lie low till the following evening. But Albie was new to the country and would
have to fend for himself outside or bluff his way into a hotel. With Carpathia
resurrected and the GC naturally on heightened alert, who knew how long he could
pull off impersonating a GC officer?
Anyway, Rayford had to know whether Albie was “with him or agin him,” as his
father used to say. He had been thrilled to see the mark of the believer on Albie's