Apocalypsis: The Complete Novel by Mario Giordano

Author:Mario Giordano [Giordano, Mario]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-01-19T05:00:00+00:00

XLIX

May 30, 2010, Annapurna Section, Himalayas

The Mil Mi-17 helicopter with a Nepalese registration cut through the thin mountain air, the roaring of the rotor blades reverberating through the whole valley. The sturdy multipurpose helicopter was a familiar sight in this area, and so it did not attract any particular attention. The Kali Gandaki valley separated the Annapurna Himal to the west. The people who lived in this “deepest gorge in the world” had become used to the busy air traffic that provided them with flocks of trekking tourists twice a year. So hardly anyone bothered to look-up at the sound of an Mi-17. Otherwise they would have seen that the helicopter with the civil identification code was equipped with two light aircraft cannons.

The helicopter struggled to gain more and more altitude as it headed for a small high plateau on the western side of the Annapurna. The plateau housed the ruins of a Buddhist monastery, barely visible with the naked eye. It lay at an almost unreachable altitude of close to 15,000 feet. None of the guides of the Newa, Tamang, or Sherpa people ever led trekking groups to the monastery because, firstly, the ruins were said to be a refuge for evil spirits and, secondly, the compound was the private property of an American mining company. Ten years ago, the consortium had bought a huge area around the former monastery and, for a short period of time, there had been a lot of building activity. However, nobody in the surrounding villages could tell what the mining company was actually mining for. At the time, people had talked about gold, but no one had ever seen trucks carrying waste or debris. Yet two weeks ago, they had heard thunderous sounds from up there, like the sounds of an explosion. But they had not seen any smoke clouds.

In the meantime, helicopters flew to the cursed monastery only on rare occasions, a fact which launched the rumor that the evil spirits had brought so much misfortune and harm to the mining company that they had discontinued their mining operations after a short while. According to another rumor, an American billionaire was planning to turn the ruins into a state-of-the-art luxury resort. A thought that made the people who lived in the Kali Gandaki valley shudder at the thought of all the tourists.

Another rumor claimed that the Indian military were using it as an interception center against China, with the tacit consent of the Nepalese government.

The few Sherpa or Newa guides who had dared the climb during the last years had paid with their lives for their curiosity, they had either fallen to their deaths or been swept away by avalanches; and their bodies had never been found. These were all good reasons to stay away from the monastery or, even better, to forget that it even existed.

The echoes of the rotor blades faded in the deep blue of the sky and disappeared from the memory of the people in the Kali Gandaki

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