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

temporized. The meeting of the battalion staff and company commanders was taking place in the battalion
meeting room, a small room with a large table and its walls lined with unit insignias, awards and trophies.
The question hit him as he walked through the door. Crichton had been told only two minutes before to
"shag your ass over to battalion and report to the sergeant major." At the time he'd been prepping his
survey teams.

Radiological survey teams were taken from within standard companies and sent out to find where the
radiation was from a nuclear attack. It was one of the many scenarios that the Army kept in its playbook
but rarely paid much attention to. The privates and one sergeant for the company's team had been chosen
months before and should have trained in the interim. But there were always more important things to do
or train on, especially on a deployment. So he was having to brief them at the same time as he was trying
to read all his instruments, prepare a NUCREP that was probably going to be read by the Joint Chiefs
and make sense of the readings, none of which, in fact,made sense.

He knew all the officers in the room and, frankly, didn't like them very much. The battalion operations
officer, a major, stayed on active duty as much as possible because his other job was as a school
teacher, elementary level, and soccer coach. As a major he made three times as much as a civilian. He
could run anybody in the battalion into the ground but the only reason he managed to keep his head
above water in his present post was his S-3 sergeant, whose civilian job was operations manager for a
large tool and die distributor. The battalion executive officer was a small town cop. Nice guy and, give
him credit, in good shape despite the Twinkies but not the brightest brick in the load. How he made
major was a huge question. The battalion commander was a good manager and a decent leader but if
you asked him to "think outside the box" he'd get a box and stand outside of it while he thought. And
there was nothing, so far, that fit in any box 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'msupposed 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'tthink about it until I hung up. Nuke that size, sir, the
EMP should have shut down every electronic device in East Orlando. I meaneverything that wasn't
shielded. Phones, computers,cars . But everything works. Ergo, it wasnot a nuke."

"Look, Crichton, I got a call, a personal call, from the Chief of Staff," the battalion commander said. "I
mean theArmy Chief of Staff. There's a NEST team on the way to check this out, but he wants datanow
. What do I tell him?"