Search for the Buried Bomber

CHAPTER 19





Rescued



One by one we were lifted onto the raft. Wang Sichuan knelt down and kissed its old, worn exterior—just as his ancestors had once knelt and kissed the vast grasslands. I, on the other hand, lay stock-still, my head resting on the side of the raft, darkness slowly filling my vision. All that had just happened: that strange and gravelly sound, the rushing water, the bitter cold, the terror, and our final song—everything, everything!—swirled together as a kind of vortex or whirlpool. I watched as it slowly spun farther and farther away from me. Death had been so close at hand. Now it seemed like only a dream.

Just as I was about to faint, someone propped me up and helped remove my clothes. Only then did the cold I had endured for so long begin to hurt. After taking off our clothes, we wrapped ourselves in blankets and slowly regained some of our spirit. Shivering, I looked around at the men who had rescued me. Two of them were fellow military prospectors, though I barely knew them. The rest were engineering corpsmen I had never met before. The only familiar face was Old Cat, still crouched at the head of the boat.

After drying himself off , Wang Sichuan asked what was going on—how had they managed to arrive just in time? According to one of the engineering corpsmen, the main campsite had sent out a cable this morning saying there had been torrential rain at the upper reaches of the Kachar River, some twenty kilometers away. The cable cautioned that a spring tide—during which the river would rise to its highest level—was likely. Old Cat was at camp when he heard this news. He went at once to find the colonel and tell him it was probable that the underground river would rise. At first the colonel didn't believe him, but Old Cat persisted, and so a rescue team was organized. And just in time too, said the corpsman. If they'd arrived only a little later, this wouldn't have been a rescue mission. They'd just be dredging up bodies.

"Thank goodness," said Wang Sichuan, "and may Tengri protect us. Old Cat, you're like a father to me. Come here and let me give you a kiss."

Old Cat just laughed and said nothing. He continued to look at us, first Pei Qing and then me, his face deep and inscrutable.

Suddenly I realized we had not turned back toward the surface, but instead were continuing deeper into the cave. "Old Cat," I asked, lips trembling, "where are we going? This cave runs into a dead end."

As soon as they heard my question, the rest of our group chimed in. "He's right!" they called out, their faces pale. "The cave dead-ends up ahead."

"The terrain here is too low," said Wang Sichuan. "We'd better head for the top of the cave. If the water rises too high, this place will become an underground water cavity. The path back will be entirely submerged and we'll be stuck here."

The corpsmen manning the rafts all looked at Old Cat. Not paying us the slightest bit of attention, he took a puff on his cigarette and said, "Keep going."

Like assault boats, the four oxskin rafts charged forward. We all raised ourselves up to see where we were going. Wang Sichuan's face shook with worry. We had just barely escaped with our lives and had no desire to risk them once more. The rafts sped over the waves. Soon we reached the end of the cave. Old Cat gestured for us to be quiet and pointed at a spot on the cave wall. Floating atop the rising water, we were now at least ninety feet above where we'd discovered the iron door. From the start we'd paid little attention to the uppermost reaches of the cave, for the darkness there was at its most impenetrable. Here the roof of the cave was dim but visible. It formed an acute angle with the cave walls. Countless rows of shadowy stalactites hung down like the pearly teeth of some wild beast. There, at the top of the rock wall we'd taken for the end of the cave, gaped a thirty-foot hole in the rock. Water rushed in with the force of a galloping horse, obscuring the opening behind a sheet of white spray.

We understood: The tectonic activity that had occurred here had not completely sealed off the cave, just blocked off the bottom. The cavern with the iron door was a water cavity. Though too small be called an underground lake, it served the same purpose: helping to regulate overflow from the underground river. Because of successive years of drought, the river was already at its lowest point when we arrived. It was only natural that we had been unable to locate the path onward—we had been searching for it on the lake bottom. Who would have thought that the path onward had actually been on the cavern's roof?

I wanted to ask Old Cat how he'd known where to go, but there was no time. We were rushed forward by the speed of the current, and as we charged toward the opening, our raft began to spin. One of the corpsmen yelled for us to get down and hold tight. Hardly had his voice faded when we burst through the opening and smashed into a wall along the narrow channel within. One of the corpsmen was knocked halfway out of the raft. Luckily Pei Qing's reflexes were lightning fast. In an instant he'd grabbed the soldier and dragged him back into the boat. Then, spinning along in total darkness, we continued down the channel.

By the end I couldn't tell if the raft was vertical or horizontal. After experiencing the extremes of exhaustion and terror and then having to contend with the speed and violence of the rapids, I had nothing left. Gritting my teeth, I attempted to rouse myself, but darkness filled my vision once more and I gave in.