18

BLACK HELICOPTER

Advanced Base Camp, Mountain of Shishapangma, Nyalam County,

Tibetan Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China

October 10, 2014

Quinn awoke with a start. Freezing air chilled his face and watered his bleary eyes as he understood that the entrance of the tent was beginning to lighten from the new day. Raising his aching head to look around, Quinn questioned everything that had happened the night before as if piecing together the incomplete fractions of a surreal high-altitude dream.

He touched the dressing on his ear for verification that it had actually happened. The wound within was all too real, rhythmically ticking with pain. Quinn again saw that blade slicing through his tent’s double-fabric skin like paper, felt the sting of the razor’s edge and the viselike grip that followed to drag him free. If he had exited through the zipped door that final rock would have crushed him.

Seeking the man who had saved him, Quinn found only Nima. The young Sherpa was sitting up, seemingly lucid, his arm expertly strapped close across his chest.

“It’s you, Nima,” Quinn said.

“Yes, Mr. Neil.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Arm hurts a lot but able to move, thanks to you, Mr. Neil,” Nima replied, smiling, clearly much recovered.

“Good. But where is the other man, the one that did help you?”

“Who?”

“I think it was a Japanese man.”

The Sherpa tried to shrug his shoulders but stopped short, wincing at the pain it caused. Instead he looked down at the sleeping bag and said firmly, in almost a mutter, “It is only you, Mr. Neil. You save me.”

“No, there was another man who cut me from the tent then brought us here. His knife did this.”

Quinn pointed to his bandaged head in evidence.

“Sorry, Mr. Neil, but I think that a rock did that. Confused you perhaps.”

For a moment Quinn questioned himself but then asked, “But what about this tent?” As he said it, Quinn noticed that except for him, Nima, and the sleeping bag the Sherpa had been lying on, the tent was now empty and bare.

“I know. Our tent. You did good work, Mr. Neil.”

A dull thudding in the distance interrupted their discussion.

It was the sound of a helicopter.

Leaving the tent Quinn saw that the tarpaulin that covered their hollow in the mound had been removed. He clambered up to a small opening in the ring of rocks at the top—clearly some sort of spy hole. He looked through at a sky heavy with gray clouds bruised yellow and brown by dust from the night’s disturbance. Below it, the terrain of the Base Camp had substantially changed. The stacked margins of moraine that surrounded the area had collapsed. The abandoned puja altars and prayer-flag poles of that season’s expeditions had toppled. Immense boulders had moved or split into pieces as if chiseled apart. New ones the size of small cars had appeared.

From the north, the black form of a military helicopter came into view, flying low beneath that same cloud. When it reached the campsite, it hovered, then landed heavily in a spinning maelstrom of tattered material and dust. Quinn had never seen such a helicopter in Tibet. Everything about the predatory beast, encrusted with antennae, domed receivers, and weapons pods, said “Search,” rather than “Rescue.” Unsure, he pulled his face down tight to the edge of the rocks and urged Nima, who had scrambled up to join him, to do the same.

The pair watched as a number of tactical soldiers dressed in black jumped from the machine to take directions from a single man in their midst then fan out to inspect the remains of the camp, assault rifles at the ready. Another team of two set up a small platform that released a drone to shoot up into the air like an angry wasp skimming the tops of the glacier’s icy penitentes to fly farther up the valley.

One of the patrol soon stopped, looking straight in one direction like a German pointer dog and raising a hand in a clenched-fist signal that brought the others running to his side. Aiming his gun, he called out loudly.

Three Tibetans, dressed in heavy sheepskin jackets and draped with thick blankets, stood up warily. Quinn recognized them as one of the yak-herder families that had been staying at the camp. With gun barrels pointed at them, they flung their arms into the air in immediate surrender. Surrounded, their blankets were tugged away and, hands held high, they were brought at riflepoint before the commanding officer.

Quinn noticed that the leader very deliberately removed his helmet and dark glasses to show the Tibetans his face as he began to shout and point toward the mountain. Nima mumbled something under his breath at the sight but when Quinn whispered “What?” he received no reply.

The commander’s questions were met with shrugs and arm waving from the Tibetans. He began to push at them, screaming all the more. Other soldiers crowded in to kick and threaten them with their guns. The three Tibetans began to plead as one was pushed to his knees.

Quinn found himself edging forward against the rock, wanting to do something, but felt Nima’s good arm restrain him. “Stay down, Mr. Neil. Please. We can do nothing.”

“The hell we can’t.”

Quinn pulled himself back below the lip of rocks. Huddled down he thrust his hand into his jacket to get his iPhone only to find it blocked by a small wad of fabric. He tugged out the soft impediment and cast it to the ground without a look, his hand instantly returning to the pocket to get the phone as fast as he could.

Once it was out and on, he rested the device on a rock, zoomed in as much as he could, and began to film the questioning of one of the Tibetans as it grew increasingly violent. Another twisted and slipped from the soldiers’ guard. The figure made a break for it, trying to run away amidst the rocks and debris of the devastated camp.

Without wait or warning, there was a burst of automatic fire.

The body jerked, a flailing, stuttering rag doll, before falling to the rocky ground.

The two remaining Tibetans immediately began to cower and plead for their lives only to be slammed faces forward to the ground, gun barrels to the backs of their heads.

The commander just walked away from them all and looked up the glacier’s tail of ice toward the snow peak hidden in cloud. He called over to the pair operating the drone. Receiving a shake of the head from one, he looked up the glacier again, issued an order, then pointed back to the helicopter making a whirling motion with his hand. The helicopter’s long multi-bladed rotor lumbered into life.

The sonic roar of the engine grew as the drone obediently returned to be stowed aboard by its operators, and the two remaining Tibetans and the corpse were shoved and pushed into the helicopter.

The helicopter soon rose to hover noisily above the camp, the fierce downdraft blowing tattered tenting and equipment around like dead leaves until it rotated 180 degrees on an invisible axis and thundered away. Quinn continued filming as something fell heavily from the side door to thump into the tundra that lay beyond the glacier river.

Two more black silhouettes fell before the helicopter finally disappeared to the north.