"James Rollins - Black Order" - читать интересную книгу автора (Romeyn Henry)

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 Ma I lory,
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.