Search for the Buried Bomber

CHAPTER 17





The Iron Door



It was a double door made of variously sized sheets of iron welded together. The door was astonishingly thick, with rivets as big as a thumb and overlaid with countless layers of cement and liquid steel. It was set inside a grooved iron frame and was sturdy enough that when we stood atop it, the door neither rocked nor flexed an inch. The two doors would open in unison from the center, where there were three huge torque-operated door handles. They had been welded immobile. Even the tiniest seams between the doors had been welded shut. No matter how hard we pulled, they failed to move at all.

The deputy squad leader gave the soldier at his side a certain inscrutable look, and the latter climbed onto the door and pressed down on it with all his weight. "It's blastproof," he said in a quiet voice. "There's a false layer within the iron sheeting filled with mechanical springs and cotton batting."

"Seems when the Japs left they had already decided not to return," whispered Wang Sichuan. We all nodded.

Having reached this point and unable to go farther, how could we explain the appearance of Yuan Xile? And where were the others who had been with her? Even if they had all died, we should have stumbled across their corpses or, at the very least, some sign of their presence. What if she had entered the cave by herself? No, that could never have happened. Then I had a strange idea. Perhaps I was overthinking, but what if the reason the Japanese sealed the iron door hadn't been to prevent others from getting in, but rather to prevent something inside from getting out?

We'd all seen Japanese bunkers while prospecting in the mountains of Inner Mongolia. We knew that once the Japanese decided to seal off an area, they made absolutely sure it would stay closed forever. Not only would they demolish all tunnels leading to the bunker, they'd also drill into its domed roof and load-bearing walls and set explosives for pinpoint directional blasting. The bunker's entire structure would be thoroughly destroyed. This was the most effective way of ensuring that none of the data or other materials inside might fall into enemy hands and that the ruined bunker would never be usable again. Here the only thing blocking our way was the iron door. This was not at all how the Japanese usually did things.

But there was no use in thinking about it. The simple truth was, we had no chance of getting past the door with the equipment we had. This wasn't a matter of being unprepared; only a massive blowtorch would suffice to open a door like this. Discovering the door had excited us. Surely there was some way of getting it open, we felt. But after kneeling and knocking and feeling about for the better part of an hour, we were utterly flummoxed. We looked at one another in blank dismay.

At last it was Pei Qing who said what we all were thinking: "What do we do now? Are we really going to have to go back like this?"

We all smiled bitterly. At this point, what was there left to do besides head back? It didn't matter how much we wanted to keep going, with the door blocking our path there was no way for us to continue. This prospecting job had reached its end.

Honoring proper work procedure, we gathered hydrological and geological samples, made an approximate description of the iron door, then gathered our things and prepared to head back. The soldiers had grown weary of exploring and were thrilled to be returning to the surface. In addition to what they were already carrying, they hefted some of our belongings as well. After walking only a short distance, though, we noticed that something about the ground had changed. Before any of us could react, the deputy squad leader, marching out in front, realized what was going on. In a low voice, he spoke just two words: "Oh shit!"

We all looked down. At once it became clear: water was bubbling up through cracks in the cave floor, and it was coming out fast. We looked at one another, our faces pale. As prospectors and engineering corpsmen, we understood all too well what was happening. The underground river was rising!

"Run!" someone yelled, and immediately we dropped all of our equipment. We sprinted like mad in the direction we had come. A shiver ran down my spine: the terrain here was far too low!

Prior to beginning river-cave exploration or prospecting work, we were always warned to pay close attention to any rise in the level of groundwater. With torrential rainfall, smaller tributaries branching onto or off of large underground rivers may begin to overflow or flow backward, causing the water level to rise and creating an extremely dangerous situation.

But Inner Mongolia in the 1960s was suffering severe drought. When we entered the cave, the sky had been a clear and boundless blue—no clouds at all. Who would have guessed rain was on the way? And because the course of the river flowed under the rocky shoal, its rise must have been soundless. Suddenly, that sound of fingernails scratching against stone sprang into mind. My God, I thought, there had been nothing strange about that noise at all—we'd read about it in textbooks, just never heard it in real life. It was the sound of water rising up through a dry cave!

We truly were running for our lives. Anyone who lives by the ocean knows how fast the tide can rise, but underground rivers rise even faster. For the first several dozen strides the danger we were fleeing remained in our imaginations, but soon the water had overflowed the cracks and begun to wash across the cave floor.

"To the water dungeon!" yelled Wang Sichuan, running out in front. "The water won't be able to rise that high!"

I knew it was already much too late. The path to the water dungeon was rugged and difficult to navigate. The water would be over our heads before we made it there. By then we wouldn't have strength left to resist the fierce pull of the current. Still, regardless of everything, I sprinted on. Had I taken a moment to stop and consider, I might have realized that gathering together anything that could float and preparing to be overtaken would have been the wisest course of action. At the time, though, only a single word flashed through my mind: Run!

We ran as fast as we could. By the time the water reached our knees we still had no idea how much farther we had to go. We could no longer see the rocks that stood in our way. Wang Sichuan was the first to fall. It was not some casual tumble, and when he came up his face was covered in blood, but he didn't stop for a moment. One after another the rest of us went down as well, but we immediately struggled to our feet and kept going. With each fall, getting back up became more exhausting, our hands and knees bleeding and torn. Mindlessly, heedless of everything, we continued on. We were moving so slowly our progress was negligible. The force of the current began to pick up and soon we could barely manage to stand in place. As soon as we relaxed our efforts in the slightest, the river would lift us up and sweep us back the way we'd come. We could go no farther.

It was then that Wang Sichuan, who was still out ahead, finally gave up running and began to scramble toward the side of a gigantic boulder. We knew what he was thinking, and that each of us had no hope of surviving on our own, so we followed his lead. By the time we'd reached it, the water was already lapping at our waists. We toyed with death in every step we took. All we could hear was the thunderous crash of the water all around, the sound amplified by the narrow cavern. The noise was deafening, and we had to shout to be heard. We locked our palms together, Wang Sichuan stepped on them, and we hoisted him atop the tall rock. Then he leaned over its face, reached down, and pulled us up one by one.

After climbing to the highest point of the rock, we huddled together and looked down. Any hint of the dry land we had crossed only a short time before was now thoroughly hidden beneath the waves.