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

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The explosion, later categorized as in the near equivalent of 60 kilotons of TNT and centered on the
University of Central Florida, occurred at 9:28 a.m. on a Saturday in early March, a calm spring day in
Orlando when the sky was clear and the air was cool and, for Florida, reasonably dry. It occurred
entirely without warning and while 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. Everybodyknew 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 theSaudis , 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 metal, probably one of the old girders that held up the roof
of the parade hall, then relative silence except for a distant screaming. He waited a moment, catching
creaking from the old building but figuring it was as safe as it was going to get, then climbed out from
under his desk and headed for the company commander's office.

The first sergeant and the operations sergeant were just pulling themselves out from under their own
desks when Crichton burst through the door without knocking, normally a cardinal offense but he figured