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

Crichton could imagine.
"The thing is, sir, this doesn't look like a nuke at all, Colonel," he
admitted.
"Looked one hell of a lot like one where I was standing," the XO
replied, his brow crinkling. "Big flash, mushroom cloud, hell of a bang.
Nuke."
"No radiation and no EMP, sir," Crichton said, shaking his head.
"No EMP?" the battalion commander said. "Are you sure?"
"What . . ." the Charlie Company commander said, then shook his
head. "I know I'm supposed to know this, damnit, but I don't. What in
the hell is . . . what was it you said?"
"EMP, sir," Crichton replied. "Electromagnetic pulse. Basically, a
nuke makes like a giant magnetic generator along with everything else."
He reached in his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. "I called my mom
to tell her I was okay and not to worry. Didn't think about it . . ."
"That's okay," the battalion commander said. "Everybody did the
same thing."
"Yes, sir," Crichton replied. "But I meant I didn't think about it until
I hung up. Nuke that size, sir, the EMP should have shut down every
electronic device in East Orlando. I mean everything that wasn't
shielded. Phones, computers, cars. But everything works. Ergo, it was
not a nuke."
"Look, Crichton, I got a call, a personal call, from the Chief of
Staff," the battalion commander said. "I mean the Army Chief of Staff.
There's a NEST team on the way to check this out, but he wants data
now. What do I tell him?"
Crichton cringed at that. The Chief of Staff was going to tell
whatever he said to somebody even higher up. Probably the President.
If he got it wrong . . .
"Right now this . . . event is not consonant with a nuclear attack,
sir," the specialist said, firmly. "There is no evidence of EMP or
radiation. Nor . . ." He paused and then squared his shoulders. "Nor
does it appear to be an asteroid strike."
"A what?" the operations officer asked.
"Look," Crichton said, thinking fast. "Sir, you ever see a movie
called Armageddon? Or Asteroid?"
"That's science fiction, right?" the major scoffed. "I don't watch that
sort of stuff."
 "An asteroid probably wiped out the dinosaurs, sir," Crichton
explained, trying not to sound as if he was speaking to a child. "It's not
science fiction, it could happen at any time."
"But we'd get warning, right?" the XO asked. "There's some sort of
a group that watches for that sort of thing. They thought one was
headed this way a couple of years ago . . ."
"No, sir, we wouldn't," Crichton said, shaking his head. "Not unless
we were extremely lucky. Spacewatch can only scan about ten percent
of the sky. An asteroid can come in from anywhere. But, again, there's
no evidence that it's an asteroid strike. Asteroids will pick up debris,
lots of it and big debris when you get a fireball like this, described as
this one was which was that it seemed to be at ground level. Chondritic