"Bolan, Mack - Stony Man 35 - Message To America" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bolan Mack)

computer keys, her lips moved silently. Kurtzman
didn't have to be much of lip-reader to realize she
was swearing under her breath.
At the center workstation, Akira Tokaido kept track
of Phoenix Force's on-site radio transmissions and
monitored the city of Riga from a weather satellite
camera. His CD player and headset lay abandoned at
the far end of the desk, along with a litter of classic
punk and grunge-rock CDs. He was in constant, ner-
vous motion, adjusting the gain and filter array to get
the clearest audio and video signals, drumming his
fingers impatiently on the edge of the keyboard, oc-
casionally brushing his palm across his hair. There
had been no transmissions from McCarter and the
others for several minutes, not since he had given the
go signal.
From the back of the room, Barbara Price stared
up at the wall screen display of broken cloud cover
over Riga. The honey blonde was the only member
of the team who looked cool and collected. The calm
she projected was a function of one of her previous
incarnations: model and cover girl. Price had learned
to control her facial expression no matter what she
was feeling. Kurtzman knew that inside the beautiful,
serene shell, Stony Man Farm's mission controller
was wound as tight as a ten-dollar watch.
Kurtzman folded a danish once and took half of it
in a huge bite. It tasted like sugar-iced cardboard. His
stomach growled ominously as he swallowed. Indi-
gestion came with the territory at this stage of a mis-
sion. The Bear and his crew had done everything hu-
manly possible to ensure the success of the job at
hand. There had been weeks of preplanning, of triple
fail-sating the escape routes, of identifying and either

eliminating or compensating for the operation's weak
points. But in every mission, there was a point when
the Farm's planners and thinkers had to wait, reduced
to mere spectators while the odds played out and the
Phoenix warriors took their turn at bat.
A brief, terrible vision filled Kurtzman's mind: the
weather satellite wall monitor flaring suddenly from
a central bright pinpoint of red to full-screen crimson,
the Riga radio signals lost in a howl of static.
Detonation.
He forced the image from his mind. Everyone in
the room was fighting the same dread. As lab-section
chief, he felt compelled to break the heavy silence, to
focus on something constructive while they sat on
their hands.