"Richard Preston - The Cobra Event" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Richard)

'What's he doing?'
The second Marine Corps Phantom was flying easily, almost languidly, turning at an angle to
the boat. There was a playful quality in its movements that seemed incredibly dangerous.
One of the sailors muttered, 'American gavnuki.' Shitheads.
Now the Phantom's wings tipped, and it banked, and it began to close with the Russian
trawler. This time, they heard the Phantom coming. It was traveling slower than the speed of
sound.
There was a clattering noise mixed with a slushy sound of bodies moving through broken
glass as the crew and scientists fell to the deck. This time Yevlikov remained standing. I will
not bow to these people again, he said to himself.
The incoming Phantom cocked its wings slightly as the pilot made fine adjustments to his
aim. He was targeting the boat.
He won't open, Yevlikov said to himself.
The Phantom opened.
He saw the cannon tracers coming straight in. Whanging explosions tore through the bow
where the shells hit, and white towers ripped the water. The Phantom floated by with a
metallic whine, the pilot holding up his middle finger at them, and then there was a whomp
and a flash as he kicked his afterburner in their faces, a gesture of contempt.
'Razebi ego dushu!' Yevlikov yelled. Fuck his soul.
The man from the Ministry of Health was kneeling now by his broken glassware, in complete
paralysis. His eyeglasses were gone. Streams of blood were threading from both ears down his
neck, and a wet stain had coursed down his trousers. They took him below, and Yevlikov set
a course for the east, moving his trawler along the edge of the forbidden zone. 'Try to find
some dishes that aren't broken,' he said to the scientists.


Seventy miles north of Yevlikov's boat, Lieutenant Commander Mark Littleberry, M.D., stood
with his colleagues on the beach at Johnston Atoll, the monkey labs at their backs, the Pacific
Ocean moving gently at their feet, a mild surf rushing and sliding over coral sand. The sun had
touched the horizon. The mare's tails of clouds feathered slowly, ice crystals moving in the
upper air. The inversion had occurred. The winds had smoothed. The moon was rising.
Conditions were perfect for a laydown.
'I feel sorry for those guys on the tugboats,' one of the scientists remarked.
'I feel even sorrier for the monkeys,' another scientist said.
Each person on the beach was holding a gas mask, in case the wind shifted unexpectedly.
'The men will be all right,' Littleberry said. Mark Littleberry was a medical doctor in the
United States Navy, a tall, handsome African-American with a crewcut and gold-rimmed
spectacles. He was a medical officer for the Johnston Atoll Field Trials, and he was regarded
as brilliant by the other scientists in the program, but perhaps too ambitious, a man who
seemed determined to rise high and do it at a young age. Littleberry had a degree from
Harvard University and a medical degree from Tulane University. His Harvard degree did not
make him very popular among the military people, but they listened to him because he knew
the science. He had made valuable contributions toward explaining the exact ways in which
the weapons they were testing entered the lungs, and he was bringing in crucial data from
monkey dissections. But Mark Littleberry was becoming unhappy with his success. He had
begun to ask himself what, exactly, he was doing.
 'Here it comes,' someone said.
All heads turned to the left. They saw a Marine Corps Phantom flying low and straight,
about two hundred meters above the water, traveling just under the speed of sound. It flew
parallel to the beach, heading west toward the setting sun. It carried no stores underwing