"John Ringo - Into the Looking Glas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

it originated at the university the effects were felt far outside its grounds.
The golfers at Fairways Country Club had only a moment to
experience the bright flash and heat when the fireball engulfed them.
The two young men on University Boulevard selling "top name brand
stereos" that they "couldn't return or their boss would kill them" didn't
even have that long. The fireball spread in every direction, a white ball
of expanding plasma, crisping the numerous suburban communities that
had spread out around the university, homes, families, dogs, children.
The plasma wavefront created a tremendous shockwave of air that
blasted like a tornado outwards, destroying everything in its path. The
shockwave spread to the south as far as U.S. 50 where early morning
shoppers were blinded and covered with flaming debris. It enveloped
the speeders on the Greenway, tossing cars up to a half a mile in the
clear air. It spread to the north almost to the town of Oviedo, erased
the venerable community of Goldenrod, spread as far as Semoran
Boulevard to the west and out to Lake Pickett to the east. The rumble
of the detonation was felt as far away as Tampa, Cocoa and Ocala and
the ascending mushroom cloud, roiling with purple and green light in the
early morning air, was visible as far away as Miami. Flaming debris
dropped into Park Avenue in Winter Park, setting the ancient oaks
along that pleasant drive briefly ablaze and crushed the vestibule of St.
Paul's Church.
Troopers in the motor pool of Charlie Company, Second Battalion,
53rd Brigade, Florida Army National Guard, who were pulling post
deployment maintenance on their Humvee and Hemet trucks, looked
up at the flash and cringed. Those that remembered their training
dropped to the ground and put their arms over their heads. Others ran
into the antiquated armory, seeking shelter in the steel cages that
secured their gear when they were at their civilian jobs or, as seemed
much more common these days, deployed to the Balkans or
Ashkanistan or Iraq.
Specialist Bob Crichton was compiling loss lists in his cubicle when
he noticed the rumble. The unit had returned only a week before from a
year-long deployment in Iraq and everyone seemed to have "combat
lossed" their protective masks. Unit protective garments were at less
than thirty percent of proper inventory. It was stupid. Everybody knew
that sooner or later the riffs were going to hit them with a WMD attack,
chemical, radiological or even nuclear now that Pakistan was giving the
Saudis of, all people, nukes. But nobody liked protective garments or
masks and they "lost" them as fast as they could. Convoy ambush?
Damn, the riffs must have grabbed my mask. Firefight? Where'd that
protective garment go?
He looked up to where his diploma from the U.S. Army Chemical
Corps Advanced Training Course hung and saw the glass shatter even
before it fell off the wall. He blinked his eyes twice and then dove under
the metal desk and clamped his hands over his ears, opening his mouth
to equalize the pressure, just before the air-pressure shockwave hit.
Even over the sound of the explosion, which seemed to envelope the
whole world, he heard the sound of the big windows in the armory
crashing to the floor of the parade hall. There was a sound of tearing