• Пожаловаться

Ian Slater: Payback

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Ian Slater: Payback» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию). В некоторых случаях присутствует краткое содержание. год выпуска: 2005, ISBN: 0-345-45376-X, издательство: Ballantine Books, категория: Триллер / на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале. Библиотека «Либ Кат» — LibCat.ru создана для любителей полистать хорошую книжку и предлагает широкий выбор жанров:

любовные романы фантастика и фэнтези приключения детективы и триллеры эротика документальные научные юмористические анекдоты о бизнесе проза детские сказки о религиии новинки православные старинные про компьютеры программирование на английском домоводство поэзия

Выбрав категорию по душе Вы сможете найти действительно стоящие книги и насладиться погружением в мир воображения, прочувствовать переживания героев или узнать для себя что-то новое, совершить внутреннее открытие. Подробная информация для ознакомления по текущему запросу представлена ниже:

Ian Slater Payback
  • Название:
    Payback
  • Автор:
  • Издательство:
    Ballantine Books
  • Жанр:
  • Год:
    2005
  • Язык:
    Английский
  • ISBN:
    0-345-45376-X
  • Рейтинг книги:
    5 / 5
  • Избранное:
    Добавить книгу в избранное
  • Ваша оценка:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Payback: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Payback»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Old soldiers never die. They just come back for more. Three terrorist missiles have struck three jetliners filled with innocent people. America knows this shock all too well. But unlike 9/11, the nation is already on a war footing. The White House and Pentagon are primed. All they need now is a target and someone bold — and expendable — enough to strike it. That someone is retired Gen. Douglas Freeman, the infamous warrior who has proved his courage, made his enemies, and built his legend from body-strewn battlegrounds to the snake pits of Washington. Using a team of “retired” Special Forces operatives and a top-secret, still-unproven stealth attack craft, Freeman sets off to obliterate the source of the missiles, a weapons stockpile in North Korea. Some desktop warriors expect Freeman to fail — especially when an unexpected foe meets his team on the Sea of Japan. But Freeman won’t turn back even as his plan explodes in his face and the Pacific Rim roils over — because this old soldier can taste his ultimate reward…

Ian Slater: другие книги автора


Кто написал Payback? Узнайте фамилию, как зовут автора книги и список всех его произведений по сериям.

Payback — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Payback», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

“Sheesh,” said one of the other teachers, but the kids loved it. What normally would have been greeted by them with hoots of “Ha-ha!” derision was now accorded a sprinkle of laughter and giggles, even by the would-be sophisticated youngsters excited by their anticipation of the seven-hour flight to London, of seeing the changing of the guard, Buckingham Palace, and the Houses of Parliament, where, one teacher had told them, Britain had made the decision to be the first to stand up and fight side by side with the Americans against Saddam Insane.

“Thank you, thank you,” said the principal, bowing to the smattering of applause for his weak attempt at humor. “Second thing for those who haven’t flown before is not to be freaked out by the noise of the plane as we taxi down the runway, and the thump of the undercarriage, that is, the wheels, as they’re brought up.” He leaned forward, reading the name of a ten-year-old fifth-grade student, the beautiful contrast between her white teeth and ebony skin set off by a cherry-red blouse, and asked, “Emily, what’s another word for bringing up the wheels, pulling them in?”

“Re—,” she began softly, tentatively, “—tracting.”

Retracting! Excellent, Emily. Everyone hear that? Retracting.”

The principal heard the word “penis,” followed by raucous laughter from a gaggle of seventh-grade boys, huddling several rows back, in front of Michael O’Shea, his assigned flight buddy, Tony Rivella from Astoria, Oregon, and the chaperone of the seventh graders, Susan Li.

“Okay, guys,” the principal told the seventh graders, “behave yourselves or you get to carry all the girls’ luggage.” There was more laughter, from the girls, the lights dimmed against the wavy painted turquoise interior, and the Boeing Dreamliner began its full-power run.

“You know, miss,” Michael O’Shea informed Susan excitedly, “they call this new plane ‘the Porpoise.’ You know why?”

“Yeah,” cut in Tony. “ ’Cause it’s supposed to look like one of them smiling fish.”

“Yes,” said Susan Li, deciding that this wasn’t the time to correct Tony Rivella’s grammar. “And the way they’ve painted the inside of the fuselage, that’s the body of the plane we’re in, looks so graceful, like a porpoise.”

“They say,” said Michael O’Shea, his eyes sparkling with anticipation, “that this Dreamliner can reach point eight five Mach.”

“That’s not fast,” said Tony. “Not even the speed of sound. This crate’s no faster’n a jumbo.”

Michael was stymied for a second, and Susan Li felt sorry for him. The gap of a missing tooth in his upper row from a recent Rollerblade argument with a brick wall, together with his crestfallen look, evoked the mother in her — she had a boy of her own — and she wanted to embrace him, hold him. But these days, no way. You didn’t dare touch a child. “I didn’t know that, Michael,” she said instead. “Point eight five Mach. It sounds pretty fast to me.”

Michael, rallied by her response, felt emboldened enough to parry Tony’s disdain further by adding, “Yeah, and the Dreamliner only needs two engines. Old jumbos used to need four.”

“So,” retorted Tony, “what if one catches fire?”

“Tony!” Susan Li cut in. “Don’t say such things.”

Michael O’Shea wouldn’t be outdone. “My dad says the airlines have ordered, like, a hundred and fifty Dreamliners and that a Dreamliner can fly on one engine and—”

“You’d crash and burn, man!”

“You two!” Susan scolded them, “stop arguing and watch your monitors.”

Tony’s aggressive retort to Michael, who was an inherently shy boy, upset Susan Li more than she cared to show. She hated any kind of petty one-upmanship because it reminded her of the mean-minded verbal bullying she had been forced to endure as a Taiwanese immigrant to the U.S. — the daily gauntlet of “slant eyes” and other racial epithets she had run into every day. The worst of such abuse, she knew, was that you never knew when it would be unleashed against you. You’d just start to feel safe, accepted by your peers, when out of the blue “Chink!” would be hurled at you and you’d feel like melting into the floor. When it was just you and your tormentors, it was bad enough, but ironically that was much easier to deal with than when you were with friends. Even now, at twenty-nine, the memories of the childhood humiliation made her face burn with indignation.

Oh, to heck with the paranoid, no-touching rules. She put her arm around young Michael. “What are you looking forward to most, Michael?”

His smile was golden, and it struck Susan then that the boy was starved for affection at home.

“The guards at Buckingham Palace,” he said, “with the big bearskin hats.”

“Not bearskin!” cut in Tony. “Can’t kill bears anymore. It’s artificial fur. I read about it.”

“Well, before artificial fur came along,” said Susan, “people had to keep warm in the winter with animal skins and fur.”

“Gross,” riposted Tony.

“Tony Rivella,” she said in a tone seldom heard from her, “what is your problem? Aren’t you looking forward to seeing London?”

He glowered up at her. “Yeah.”

“Well, what would you like to see?”

Tony shrugged. “Dunno. Big Ben, I guess.”

She turned to Michael, raising her voice above the high scream of the engines approaching full pitch. “How about you, Michael? You want to see Big Ben?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve seen it in the movies,” boasted Tony, but his tone was suddenly less pugnacious.

Susan put her other arm about Tony. “We’re going to have a great time. Right?”

Both of them said, “Right.” As the Dreamliner lifted off, Susan instinctively held them closer.

Michael glimpsed the buildings of JFK rushing by, the Manhattan skyline in the distance and headlights coming on along the expressway, a wink of one bright light pretty against the purple dusk.

It was the last thing he saw, the missile slamming into the starboard-side engine, fragments penetrating and igniting the wing’s fuel tank. The pilot had no chance. The 7E7 plummeted hard right from seventy feet, the wheels not yet retracted, their spinning throwing off burning fuel like a grinding wheel spitting sparks, the fully loaded and fully fueled plane slamming into the tarmac at 122 miles per hour; the time elapsed between the Boeing taking off and it crashing into an inferno, 3.8 seconds. It was 4:48 P.M., Eastern Standard Time.

In Los Angeles it was 1:48 P.M. West Coast time. Japanese Airlines Jumbo Flight 824 taking off from LAX was struck on its port-side number-two engine. At Dallas/Fort Worth, the terrorists, in the final act of simultaneous horror, brought down a Brazilian Air jumbo bound for Rio.

Unbeknownst to the general public, as CNN’s anchorwoman Marte Price explained during the network’s sensationalist “Triangle of Terror” report on the New York — L.A. — Dallas/Fort Worth hits by the three MANPADS — Man Portable Air Defense System — missiles, modern jet engines and their mountings are built to contain a wide range of explosions. But what had presumably happened in all three crashes, as Marte Price’s audience of 14 million were told, by virtue of quickly generated computer graphics and by aeronautical experts, was that shrapnel had probably penetrated the wings, and thus the fuel, which in LAX’s case the air traffic controllers saw spewing out of the starboard wing in a plethora of high-pressure leaks, had been ignited by sparking nine seconds later. Exit stairways were deployed by flight attendants on the JAL plane, allowing some people to temporarily escape, even though most of these perished in the flash fire that swept under the fuselage from starboard to port, once the flood of fuel had been ignited, the flames fanned by the brisk San Fernando breeze.

Читать дальше

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Payback»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Payback» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё не прочитанные произведения.


Brian Freeman: The Bone House
The Bone House
Brian Freeman
Brian Freeman: The Burying Place
The Burying Place
Brian Freeman
Ian Slater: Darpa Alpha
Darpa Alpha
Ian Slater
Ian Slater: Choke Point
Choke Point
Ian Slater
Brian Freeman: The Cold Nowhere
The Cold Nowhere
Brian Freeman
Отзывы о книге «Payback»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Payback» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.