Search for the Buried Bomber

Search for the Buried Bomber - By Xu Lei




PREFACE




Ihad to think this story through for a long time before writing it. So much of what happened remains a mystery, even to me. Other parts were simply absurd. They failed to conform even to our most fundamental ideas of the world at that time. Perhaps such things should not be passed on, I thought, but rather left buried and forgotten for all eternity.

Still, I have decided to record my story. To not do so, I realized, would be a terrible pity and a great disservice, not only to those who lived through the events with me, but also to the very history of our nation itself.

I am a retired geological prospector formerly attached to the Geological Prospecting Unit of the People's Liberation Army. In the red madness of those years, we were blessed to escape the storm of the Cultural Revolution. Instead, it was our fate to wander the great mountains and rivers of China in search of untold riches hidden deep beneath the earth's surface. For two decades we journeyed across China's no-man's-land, alternately facing extreme suffering and numbing boredom. And then the things we encountered…the nameless terrors, things far beyond the scope of the imagination. Such things were never supposed to be real. Not one word about them will ever be seen in the official records. Any trace of their existence has been sealed away forever. Some of what follows comes from my personal experiences, and some of it was told to me by my older comrades. We swore to never reveal what we saw to the wider world. I will not break that oath. So remember, what follows is merely fiction and nothing more.





CHAPTER 1





The 723 Project



I was a prospector for twenty years. It was dangerous work, but more perilous than any raging rapid was the indescribable boredom. During one long stretch in my early years, I looked out upon the endless wilderness that surrounded us and felt a suffocating tightness descend upon me. To know that one must remain in such a place for many more years…only one who has experienced it could understand that sort of torment. But that feeling vanished completely after what happened in 1962. I learned then that hidden deep within those dreary mountains were terrifying mysteries. I finally understood that the fearful stories the older prospectors told about the mountains were more than just idle talk.

Most older prospectors will have already heard of the 1962 incident. As for you younger readers, if your mother or father was a prospector, ask them. Back then there was a well-known prospecting initiative called the Inner Mongolia 723 Project—"23" being the assigned number for coal-focused prospecting work in the mountains of Inner Mongolia that year. Three large groups of prospectors entered the primeval Inner Mongolian forests in quick succession, prospecting the area in small blocks. Then, only two months after it began, the 723 Project suddenly ended. The project headquarters began quickly pulling technical personnel from other prospecting teams. These specialists were subjected to rounds of thorough questioning, made to fill out endless forms, and had their personal records carefully scrutinized. Not one of them was ever told where the information was being sent.

At last, a large group of prospecting specialists was selected to join the new 723 Project. The 1962 incident was causing a great deal of excitement. Rumors flew back and forth about the incredible thing the 723 Project was said to have discovered. But despite all the stories, no one really knew for sure what had been dug up. For those not directly involved, this is generally where the story ends. The Cultural Revolution began, and in those dark times no one paid any more attention to the mystery of the 723 Project. After being escorted by military trucks into the mountains, those specialists were quickly forgotten.

I was among the forgotten. There were twenty-four of us— selected and, by military order, put on trains to either Jiamusi or Qiqihar. There we were packed into military vehicles, which rocked and bounced down the long road from Heilongjiang to Inner Mongolia. We began our journey on paved roads and highways, but the farther we drove, the more hazardous the terrain became. By the last few days, we were driving along steeply winding mountain passes far from any sort of civilization. I didn't have the slightest idea what was going on, but listening to my fellow passengers, I could tell that whatever had taken place within those mountains was far from ordinary.

At the time, we all guessed it had to be something industry related. Most of us thought it was a large oil field. Some of the older guys who'd been part of the huge Daqing oil-field exploration spoke vividly of its discovery. It had been a similar situation, they said: After Daqing was first located, a select group of experts from all across China was transferred to the area. It was only after several months of discussion and verification that the oil field's existence was confirmed. We couldn't help but feel a sense of pride upon hearing this. After all, we'd been chosen.

When we arrived at the lower base, we suddenly realized things weren't so simple. The first thing we saw was an unbroken line of army tents, large and small, stretched out along the basin, like a chain of grave mounds running infinitely into the horizon. It looked nothing like the base of an engineering brigade, but rather like the field station of an army preparing for battle. We stared dumbfounded at the bustling camp and all the engineering corpsmen running back and forth. For a moment we thought our leaders had simply gone mad and were preparing to attack the Soviet Union. We soon discovered, though, they weren't all troop tents. Most were filled with supplies. A few veterans went off to take a peek and came back raving that the tents were bursting with Soviet equipment.

In those days, our prospecting equipment was terribly out-ofdate, and our methods had changed little since the time of liberation. Our country had only a small amount of so-called modern equipment, most of it bought from the Soviet Union at extremely high prices. As on-the-ground specialists, we'd never had the opportunity to see gear like this. The problem was, this Soviet equipment was used only for deep excavation—at a range of three thousand to forty-five hundred feet underground. Until then no one in China had mined to a depth of more than about fifteen hundred feet. Our country simply lacked the strength and ability to exploit those deep deposits. Even if we had wanted to, it would still have taken five to seven years to set up the proper infrastructure before the mine would be operational. China needed resources to grow, but as the saying goes, distant water cannot quench present thirst. It was the government's policy to keep the discovery of deep deposits a secret, saving them for the next generation to use, rather than fruitlessly attempting to extract them. So to find this seemingly useless equipment here was puzzling. Our hearts were troubled by a strange unease.

Nothing would be made clear that night. We new arrivals were assigned sleeping quarters, three men to a tent. Nighttime on the mountain was deadly cold. There was a stove inside the tent, but it was impossible to sleep. Even if you managed to doze off, the attendant would come to add wood, the wind would rush in, and the cold immediately awoke anyone still sleeping. There was nothing to do but sit up and wait for the light of dawn to break across the sky.

There were two other guys in my tent. One was older. He was born in the late twenties, in Inner Mongolia, and seemed to be rather well known. Everyone called him "Old Cat," but his real name was Mao Wuyue. I told him it was a good name because he had the same surname as Chairman Mao. The other guy was a sturdy Mongolian from Heilongjiang named Wang Sichuan. He was about my age and dark as coal. Everyone just called him "Bear." Old Cat never said much. Bear and I would be chatting away while he just sat there puffing on a cigarette and chuckling at us. Who knew what he was thinking about?

Bear was your typical northerner, jovial and outgoing. We soon became as close as brothers. He told me his grandfather's generation had intermarried with Han Chinese, and the whole family had moved to inner Shanhaiguan to become horse traders during the great westward migration. When the War of Resistance against the Japanese broke out, his father joined the logistical squadron of the Northern Chinese field army, serving as a horse trainer for Luo Ruiqing. After liberation, his father moved back to his hometown in Heilongjiang province and became the manager of a coal mine.

It was because of his father that Wang Sichuan became a prospector, though it wasn't what he set out to do. When Wang Sichuan was young, China's key industries were in dire need of resources, making coal a valuable commodity and coal mining an occupation of great importance. Wang Sichuan's father spent the second half of his life buried deep within the coal mines, emerging only occasionally to return home. It was all he thought about, all he spoke about. Even when he talked in his sleep, he talked about coal. Wang Sichuan's mother would rail against this obsession, and his parents got into horrible fights, so from an early age Wang Sichuan hated coal. When he grew up, his father wanted him to enter the coal industry. Wang Sichuan firmly refused. His dream was to be a driver in the military, but he lacked the connections. In the end, after living at home for half a year with no job or source of income, he was forced to compromise. He would work for his father so long as his responsibilities had as little to do with coal as possible. That's how he became a prospector. To his surprise, he found he had a talent for the work and was soon able to attend university thanks to a pro-minority university admissions policy.

Hearing Wang Sichuan's hatred of coal, I had to laugh. What he said was true. Even though our work was the foundation of the industry, we rarely came into contact with any actual coal mines. Probably no other mining-related job had so little—physically, at least—to do with the mines as ours.

After he'd finished talking about his life and family, Wang Sichuan asked me about my own. In those days, my family's class was nothing to be proud of, so I just told him we were common farmers and left it at that.

Actually, my grandfather's generation really could be considered farmers. My ancestors were poor peasants from Hongdong in Shanxi province. People say that, for a short period of time, my grandfather was a bandit and amassed a small amount of property. Because of these holdings, he was reported during the land-reform movement and labeled a counterrevolutionary rich peasant. But my grandfather was stubborn. He took my grandmother, father, and uncle and fled to the South. There, my grandfather made his two sons take a Buddhist monk for a second uncle. Because this monk was considered a poor peasant, my father and uncle were now also ranked as poor peasants. But even though I was considered a poor peasant, my grandfather remained a counterrevolutionary, and that could be dangerous.

Wang Sichuan and I talked about what we thought was going on here, and about the local customs and our hometowns. Wang Sichuan was a northerner and I was a southerner. He was ethnically Mongolian and I was Han Chinese. There were an endless number of things for us to talk about. Both of us had endured our share of hardships, and so a single cold, sleepless night was no great ordeal.

That morning, brigade headquarters dispatched someone to give us a tour of the camp. I think his name was Rong Aiguo. He looked about thirty or forty, but with prospectors it's always difficult to tell someone's true age. The harsh elements take a toll on one's features. And there was something not quite right about this man. Though he escorted us all around the camp, he seemed to be merely going through the motions. He would answer no questions and remained silent whenever one was raised. He told us, for example, that the 723 Project was actually initiated three years ago, that work hadn't started until this year due to inadequate personnel, but he never said anything about what work was being done here. Everything that left his mouth was mundane day-to-day information like "The canteen is located over here," or "This is the procedure for going to the bathroom."

A month passed with no developments whatsoever. We continued to idle away our time at base camp, doing nothing, knowing nothing. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us. After a while, some of the veterans were unable to stand the boredom. They goaded some workers into tracking down Rong Aiguo—several times, in fact—but he always had one excuse or another to avoid us. Slowly, an awareness of the strangeness of our situation crept over us. A contagious anxiety spread throughout the group. A few even began to suspect we'd all been found guilty of some terrible offense and were soon to be executed. Public executions were all too common in those days. I could feel my heart pound in my chest as I listened to these rumors.

It was already fall in Inner Mongolia, and the temperature was dropping fast. As soon as we stepped outside, chill gusts penetrated our bones. We southerners found it particularly hard, but it was tough for everyone. Many began to suffer from nosebleeds. I remember us passing a whole month barely ever leaving the warmth of our stovetop kang beds: chatting, nibbling on steamed corn bread, and using raggedy old socks to wipe the blood from our nostrils.

Then, early one Wednesday morning, semiconscious, we were once again stuffed into a truck and, along with two other vehicles packed full of engineering corpsmen, driven farther into the mountains. By now, the mix of excitement and uncertainty that I had felt at the start of this assignment had changed to full-on fear. Through a gap in the tarp that covered our People's Liberation Army truck, I stared out at the cliffside plank road we seemed to be driving toward. Beyond, the expanse of mountains and ancient forest extended unbroken into the distance. I looked at the faces of the engineering corpsmen sitting around me. They were expressionless. The atmosphere within the truck had turned deadly serious. None of us spoke. We simply braced ourselves against the vehicle's interior as it rocked and jolted along, silently awaiting the end of our journey.