Black Order

by James Rollins

The beat of the rotors changed pitch.

  “They’re coming this way,” Josh said and waved everyone back to the nests of four-season storm tents, clearing the flat expanse that served as the camp’s helipad.

  The black helicopter dropped over them. Rotor wash swirled sand and bits of rock. A Snickers wrapper blew past Lisa’s nose. Prayer flags danced and twisted, and yaks scattered. After so many days of quiet in the mountains, the noise was deafening.

  The B-2 settled to its skids with a grace that belied its size. Doors swung open. Two men stepped out. One wore a green camouflage uniform and shouldered an automatic weapon, a soldier of the Royal Nepalese Army. The other stood taller, in a red robe and cloak sashed at the waist, head shaved bald. A Buddhist monk.

  The pair approached and spoke rapidly in a Nepalese dialect to a pair of Sherpas. There was a short bout of gesturing, then an arm pointed.

  At Lisa.

  The monk led the way to her, flanked by the soldier. From the suncrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the monk appeared to be in his midforties, skin the color of latte, eyes caramel brown.

  The soldier’s skin was darker, his eyes pinched closer together. His gaze was fixed below her neckline. She had left her jacket unzipped, and the sports bra she was wearing beneath her fleece vest seemed to have captured his attention.

  The Buddhist monk, on the other hand, kept his eyes respectful, even bowing his head slightly. He spoke precise English touched by a British accent. “Dr. Cummings, I apologize for the intrusion, but there has been an emergency. I was informed by the HRA clinic that you are a medical doctor.”

  Lisa frowned, her brow furrowing. “Yes.”

  “A nearby monastery has been struck by a mysterious ailment, affecting almost all the inhabitants. A sole messenger, a man from a neighboring village, had been dispatched on foot, traveling three days to reach the hospital in Khunde. Once alerted, we’d hoped to ferry one of the HRA doctors up to the monastery, but an avalanche has the clinic already shorthanded. Dr. Sorenson told us of your presence here at Base Camp.”

  Lisa pictured the short Canadian doctor, another woman. They had shared a six-pack of Carlsberg lager along with sweet milk tea one evening. “How can I be of service?” she asked.

  “Would you be willing to accompany us up there? Though isolated, the monastery is serviceable by helicopter.”

  “How long…?” she asked and glanced in Josh’s direction. He had moved over to join them.

  The monk shook his head, his eyes concerned and slightly abashed at imposing upon her. “It is about a three-hour ride. I don’t know what we’ll find.” Another worried shake of his head.

  Josh spoke up. “We’re held up here for the day anyway.” He touched her elbow and leaned closer. “But I should go with you.”

  Lisa balked at this suggestion. She knew how to take care of herself. But she had also been instructed on the tense political climate in Nepal since 1996. Maoist rebels had been waging a guerrilla war in the highlands, seeking to overthrow the constitutional monarchy and replace it with a socialist republic. They were known to hack off victims’ limbs—one by one—with farm sickles. Though there was currently a cease-fire, occasional atrocities were still committed.

  She eyed the well-oiled automatic rifle in the soldier’s hands. When even a holy man needed an armed escort, perhaps she had better reconsider her brother’s offer.

  “I…I have little more than a first aid kit and some monitoring equipment,” she said haltingly to the monk. “I’m hardly suited for a major medical situation involving multiple patients.”

  The monk nodded and waved to the idling helicopter. Its rotors still spun. “Dr. Sorenson has stocked us with everything we should need for the short term. We don’t expect to impose upon your services for more than a day. The pilot has a satellite phone to relay your findings. Perhaps the matter has already been resolved, and we could return here as soon as midday.”

  A shadow passed over his features with this last statement. He didn’t believe it. Worry threaded his words…that and perhaps a trace of fear.

  She took a deep breath of the thin air. It barely filled her lungs. She had taken an oath. Besides, she had snapped enough photographs. She wanted to get back to real work.

  The monk must have noted something in her face. “So you’ll come.”

  “Yes.”

  “Lisa…,” Josh warned.

  “I’ll be fine.” She squeezed his arm. “You have a team to keep from mutinying on you.”

  Josh glanced back to Boston Bob and sighed.

  “So hold the fort here until I get back.”

  He faced her again, not swayed, but he did not argue. His face remained tight. “Be careful out there.”

  “I have the very best of the Royal Nepalese Army to watch my back.”

  Josh stared at the lone soldier’s oiled weapon. “That’s what I’m worried about.” He tried to lighten it with a snort, but it came out more bitter.

  Lisa knew that was the best she’d manage out of him. She quickly gave him a hug, gathered her medical backpack from her tent, and in moments, she was ducking under the razored threat of the spinning rotors and climbing into the backseat of the rescue helicopter.

  The pilot did not even acknowledge her. The soldier took the copilot seat. The monk, who introduced himself as Ang Gelu, joined her in the backseat.

  She donned a set of sound-dampening headphones. Still, the engines roared as the blades spun faster. The craft bobbled on its treads as the rotors tried to grip the thin air. A whine ratcheted up into subsonic ranges. The craft finally lifted free of the rocky helipad and rose rapidly.

  Lisa felt her stomach sink below her navel as the craft circled out over a neighboring gorge. She stared through the side window and down to the clutter of tents and yaks below. She spotted her brother. He had an arm lifted in farewell, or was it just raised against the sun’s glare? Next to him stood Taski Sherpa, easily identifiable by his cowboy hat.

  The Sherpa’s earlier assessment followed her into the sky, icing through her thoughts and worries.

  Death rides these winds.

  Not a pleasant thought at the moment.

  Beside her, the monk’s lips moved in silent prayer. He remained tense…whether from their mode of transport or in fear of what they might discover at the monastery.

  Lisa leaned back, the Sherpa’s words still echoing in her head.

  A bad day indeed.

  9:13 A.M.

  ELEVATION: 22,230 FEET

  He moved along the chasm floor with easy strides, steel crampons gouging deep into snow and ice. To either side rose cliffs of bare stone, pictographed in brown lichen. The gorge angled upward.

  Toward his goal.

  He wore a one-piece goose-down suit, camouflaged in shades of white and black. His head was covered by a polar-fleece balaclava, his face hidden behind snow goggles. His climbing pack weighed twenty-one kilos, including the ice ax strapped to one side and a coil of poly rope on the other.

  He also carried a Heckler & Koch assault rifle, an extra twenty-round magazine, and a satchel holding nine incendiary grenades.

  He had no need for additional oxygen, not even at this elevation. The mountains had been his home for the past forty-four years. He was as well habituated to these highlands as any Sherpa, but he didn’t speak their language and a different heritage shone from his eyes: one eye a glacial blue, the other a pure white. The disparity marked him as surely as the tattoo on his shoulder. Even among the Sonnekönige, the Knights of the Sun.

  The radio in his ear buzzed.

  “Have you reached the monastery?”

  He touched his throat. “Fourteen minutes.”

  “No word must escape of the accident.”

  “It will be handled.” He kept his tone even, breathing through his nose. He heard as much fear as command in the other’s voice. Such weakness. It was one of the reasons he seldom visited the Granitschloß, the Granite Castle, preferring to live on the fringes, as
was his right.

  No one asked him to move any closer.

  They only asked for his expertise when it was most needed.

  His earpiece crackled. “They will reach the monastery soon.”

  He didn’t bother to answer. He heard a distant thump of rotors. He calculated in his head. No need to hurry. The mountains taught patience.

  He steadied his breathing and continued down toward the cluster of stone buildings with red-tile roofs. Temp Och Monastery sat perched at the edge of a cliff, approachable only by a single path from below. The monks and students seldom had to worry about the rest of the world.

  Until three days ago.

  The accident.

  It was his job to clean it up.

  The bell-beat of the approaching helicopter grew louder, rising from below. He kept his pace steady. Plenty of time. It was important that those who approached enter the monastery.

  It would be much easier to kill them all.

  9:35 A.M.

  From the helicopter, the world below had frozen into a stark photographic negative. A study in contrasts. Blacks and whites. Snow and rock. Mist-shrouded peaks and shadowed gorges. The morning light reflected achingly off ice ridges and glacial cliffs, threatening snow blindness from the aerial glare.

  Lisa blinked away the brightness. Who would live so far from everything? In such an unforgiving environment? Why did mankind always find such inhospitable places to claim when much easier lives were available to them?

  Then again, her mother often posed the same riddle to Lisa. Why such extremes? Five years at sea on a research vessel, then another year training and conditioning for the rigors of mountain climbing, and now here in Nepal, preparing to assault Everest. Why such risks when an easier life was readily available?

  Lisa’s answer had always been a simple one: for the challenge of it. Hadn’t George Mallory, mountaineering legend, answered similarly when asked why he climbed Everest? Because it was there. Of course, the true story behind that famous line was that Mallory had issued it in exasperation to a badgering journalist. Had Lisa’s response to her mother’s inquiries been any less a knee-jerk reaction? What was she doing up here? Everyday life offered enough challenges: making a living, saving for retirement, finding someone to love, surviving loss, raising children.

  Lisa balked at these thoughts, recognizing a twinge of anxiety and realizing what it might imply. Could I be living a life on the edge to avoid living a real one? Is that perhaps why so many men have passed through my life without stopping?

  And here she was. Thirty-three, alone, no prospects, only her research for company, and a one-person sleeping bag for a bed. Maybe she should just shave her head and move into one of these mountaintop monasteries.

  The helicopter jittered, angling up.

  Her attention focused back to the moment.

  Oh, crap…

  Lisa held her breath as the helicopter skimmed a sharp ridge. Its skids barely cleared the windswept lip of ice and dove into the neighboring gorge.

  She forced her fingers to unlock from the seat’s armrest. Suddenly a three-bedroom cottage with two-point-five kids didn’t sound so bad.

  Beside her, Ang Gelu leaned forward and pointed between pilot and soldier, motioning below. The roar of the rotors swallowed his words.

  Lisa leaned her cheek against the door’s window to peer outside. The curve of cold Plexiglas kissed her cheek. Below, she spotted the first bit of color. A tumble of red-tile roofs. A small collection of eight stone lodges perched on a plateau, framed by twenty-thousand-foot peaks on three sides and a vertical cliff on the fourth.

  Temp Och Monastery.

  The helicopter dropped precipitously toward the buildings. Lisa noted a terraced potato field to one side. Some corrals and barns sprawled on the other. No movement. No one came out to greet the noisy newcomers.

  More ominously, Lisa noted a collection of goats and blue bharal sheep gathered in the penned corrals. They weren’t moving either. Rather than driven into a panic by the descending helicopter, they were all sprawled on the ground, legs twisted, necks bent, unnatural.

  Ang Gelu noted the same and sank into the seat. His eyes found hers. What had happened? Some argument was under way between pilot and soldier in the front seat. Plainly the pilot didn’t want to land. The soldier won the argument by placing a palm on the butt of his rifle. The pilot scowled and snugged his oxygen mask tighter over his nose and mouth. Not because he needed the additional air, but in fear of contagion.

  Still, the pilot obeyed the soldier’s orders. He strangled the controls and lowered the craft earthward. He aimed as far from the corrals as possible, dropping toward the edge of the monastery’s potato fields.

  The fields rose in an amphitheater of tiers, lined by rows of tiny green sprouts. High-altitude potato farming had been introduced by the British in the early nineteenth century and potatoes had become one of the subsistence crops of the area. With a jarring bump, the helicopter’s skids struck the rocky soil, crushing a row of plants. Neighboring sprouts whipped and waved in the rotor wash.

  Still no one acknowledged their arrival. She pictured the dead livestock. Was there even anyone to rescue? What had happened here? Various etiologies ran through her head, along with routes of exposure: ingestion, inhalation, contact. Or was it contagious? She needed more information.

  “Perhaps you should stay here,” Ang Gelu said to Lisa while unbuckling his seat straps. “Let us check out the monastery.”

  Lisa grabbed her medical pack from the floor. She shook her head. “I have no fear of the sick. And there may be questions only I can answer.”

  Ang Gelu nodded, spoke hurriedly to the soldier, and cracked open the rear hatch. He climbed out, turning to offer a hand to Lisa.

  Cold winds swept into the heated interior, aided by the rush of the rotors. Pulling up her parka’s hood, Lisa found the frigid draft drained whatever oxygen was still in the air at this altitude. Or maybe it was her fear. Her earlier words were braver than she felt.

  She took the monk’s hand. Even through her woolen mittens, she felt his strength and warmth. He did not bother covering his shaved head, seemingly oblivious to the icy cold.

  She clambered out but stayed ducked under the sweep of the helicopter blades. The soldier left last. The pilot remained inside the cabin. Though he might land the helicopter as ordered, he was taking no chances in leaving its canopy.

  Ang Gelu slammed the hatch closed and the trio hurried across the potato field toward the jumble of stone buildings.

  From the ground, the red-shingled lodges were taller than they seemed from the air. The centermost structure looked to be three stories tall, topped with a pagoda-style roof. All the buildings were elaborately decorated. Rainbow-hued murals framed doors and windows. Gold leaf brightened lintels, while carved stone dragons and mythic birds sneered and leered from roof corners. Covered porticos linked the various buildings, creating little courtyards and private spaces. Wooden prayer wheels, carved with ancient lettering, were mounted on poles throughout the structures. Multicolored prayer flags draped from rooflines, snapping in the intermittent gusts.

  While it had a fairy-tale appearance to it, a mountaintop Shangri-La, Lisa still found her steps slowing. Nothing moved. Most of the windows were shuttered. Silence weighed heavily.

  Then there was the distinct taint to the air. Though mostly a researcher, Lisa had experienced her share of death while a medical resident. The fetid miasma of rot could not be so easily blown away. She prayed it was coming only from the livestock on the far side of the pavilion. But from the lack of response to their presence, she didn’t hold out much hope.

  Ang Gelu led the way, flanked by the soldier. Lisa was forced to hurry to keep up with them. They passed between two buildings and headed toward the central towering structure.

  In the main courtyard, farm implements lay strewn haphazardly, as if abandoned in a hurry. A cart tethered to a yak stood overturned on its side. The animal was dead, too
, sprawled on its flank, belly distended with bloat. Milky eyes stared at them. A distended tongue protruded from black swollen lips.

  Lisa noted the lack of flies or other tiny opportunists. Were there flies at this altitude? She wasn’t sure. She searched the skies. No birds. No noise except the hushed wind.

  “This way,” Ang Gelu said.

  The monk headed for a set of tall doors that led into the central dwelling, clearly the main temple. He tested the latch, found it unlocked, and pulled it open with a moan of hinges.

  Beyond the threshold, the first sign of life flickered. To either side of the doorway, barrel-size lamps glowed with a dozen flaming wicks. Butter lamps, fueled by yak butter. The fetid odor was worse inside. It did not bode well.

  Even the soldier now held back from crossing the threshold, shifting the automatic weapon from one shoulder to the other, as if to reassure himself. The monk simply strode inside. He called out a greeting. It echoed.

  Lisa entered behind Ang Gelu. The soldier kept a station at the doorstep.

  A few more barrel lamps illuminated the temple’s interior. To either side, towering prayer wheels lined the walls, while juniper-scented candles and incense sticks burned near an eight-foot-tall teak statue of Buddha. Other gods of the pantheon were lined behind his shoulders.

  As Lisa’s eyes adjusted to the gloomy interior, she noted the numerous wall paintings and intricately carved wooden mandalas, depicting scenes that in the flickering light seemed demonic. She glanced upward. Raftered tiers climbed two stories, supporting a nest of hanging lamps, all dark and cold.

  Ang Gelu called again.

  Somewhere above their heads, something creaked.

  The sudden noise froze them all. The soldier flicked on a flashlight and waved it above. Shadows jittered and jumped, but nothing was there.

  Again the creak of planks sounded. Someone was moving on the top floor. Despite the positive sign of life, Lisa’s skin pebbled with goose bumps.

  Ang Gelu spoke. “A private meditation room overlooks the temple. There are stairs in back. I will check. You stay here.”

  Lisa wanted to obey, but she felt the weight of both her medical backpack and her responsibility. It wasn’t the hand of man that had slain the livestock. That she was certain. If there was a survivor, anyone to tell what happened here, she was best suited for this task.